


Come Near

by t_fic (topaz), topaz, topaz119 (topaz)



Category: Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Canon Compliant, F/M, First Kiss, First Time, Friends to Lovers, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Movie(s), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Road Trips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-23
Updated: 2013-10-23
Packaged: 2017-12-30 05:20:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 24,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1014611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/topaz/pseuds/t_fic, https://archiveofourown.org/users/topaz/pseuds/topaz, https://archiveofourown.org/users/topaz/pseuds/topaz119
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What exactly <i>do</i> you do after monsters and magic?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [2013 Marvel Big Bang](http://marvel-bang.livejournal.com). There is a super-awesome fanmix by [](http://nessataleweaver.livejournal.com/profile)[**nessataleweaver**](http://nessataleweaver.livejournal.com/) \-- mix master post [here](http://nessataleweaver.livejournal.com/30295.html); direct download [here](http://www.mediafire.com/?86wy5m3ypg6hkq2).

Somewhere in the post-adrenaline crash, Clint thinks he hears Fury conferring with Stark and making arrangements for personnel from the helicarrier to bunk out in the shell of Stark Tower, both so they can bring the reactors down for inspection and repair and so SHIELD can offer manpower to the mayor’s office to assist in getting the city back on its feet. When the fleet of SUVs pull up and the team piles in, Clint assumes that's where they're going. He's more tired than he's ever been; the only sleep he's gotten since before it all started is the two hours he was unconscious after Nat had cognitively re-calibrated him. She's right there next to him, and his brain takes that as permission to switch off so he's basically sleepwalking as he gets out of the car after the rest of the team. It takes him until they're inside to realize it's a house, not the Tower; and even then, Nat just points him toward a sweeping staircase, and he stumbles along next to her. 

He makes it to the first landing without ending up flat on his face, but after that it's like he half-falls on every other step. Natasha has him around the waist, and he appreciates her determination, but she's not in such great shape herself. He braces himself to at least try to keep from taking her right back down with him, but then Rogers is behind them both, a solid presence that gets them to the top of the stairs and in front of a half-open door.

"Don't drop yet," Natasha is saying. She digs her nails into Clint’s side, jagged pinpricks of a sharper pain in the middle of the dull, throbbing ache that's the rest of his body. "Shower, Clint, come on, two more minutes to get the top layer of dirt off you." Clint wants to tell her to fuck off and leave him alone, but it's their standard process at the end of an op, instituted with good reason, in that it's kept at least a half-dozen nasty infections from getting firmly established over the years. He shuts down that line of thought as quickly as he can because it'd been Coulson who'd insisted they do it, and there's no way Clint can deal with thinking about Phil just yet.

The bathroom is something out of a magazine, with a small lake for a tub and a shower built for an orgy or three. It takes Clint long enough to get his Kevlar and boots off that the steam is like mist drifting through the marble and gilt. He has a long couple of seconds where he can only see the cloud that had kept his stolen Quinjet out of visual range of the helicarrier on the approach to attack, but then Natasha is there again, and he’s back in billionaire-land, every muscle in his body shaking and sore and his brain all but paralyzed from a lethal combination of exhaustion and grief and guilt. 

“Clint,” Natasha says quietly, and he kicks himself out of that headspace. It isn’t going to help anything if he shuts down. He repeats that over and over as he drags himself into the shower and groans as the water lives up to the promise of all the steam and all but scalds his skin. His forearms and biceps are cut way the hell up from the window he’d slammed through; every little nick and scrape stings and burns under the spray, but at least none of them feel like they’ve still got glass in them. He braces his forearms against a wall and lets the water beat down on his neck and shoulders, not moving for long enough that he’s not sure he hasn’t fallen asleep. 

“If you drown in there, I will make Stark build the tackiest, most maudlin memorial anyone has ever seen,” Natasha calls. “It will be so sickeningly sentimental nobody will be able to look at it without gagging.”

“Good to know you haven’t lost your deep well of compassion,” Clint manages. He’s kind of proud, to tell the truth. He had no idea his brain was functioning well enough for sarcasm, but maybe the snark really is in his DNA.

“I didn’t hunt your brainwashed ass down to lose you in the shower of Tony Stark’s city house.” Natasha hands him a towel and eyes him critically, reaching up to touch the bruise along his hairline, her gift to him. Clint stays still until she steps back. “Did Medical write you a ‘script for anything?” 

“I don’t know,” Clint says, fumbling the towel around his waist and moving out of the way so she can take her turn in the shower. “Maybe?”

“Jarvis?” 

“Agent Barton does have several options for--”

“Don’t need it.” Clint leans against the door and closes his eyes. 

“Barton--” 

“Romanoff,” Clint matches her tone. She calls his bluff and lets the silence draw out. In the end, he knows she knows he’s too fucking tired to out-stubborn her, so it only stings his pride a little to concede. “I really fucking don’t need to be fighting through drugs if... you know, my brain cracks wide open on me.” He hears her muttering and adds, “I’m good, Nat. I can barely stand. I’ll sleep.”

“Then you should probably get your ass into the bed, because I’m not much better shape. You’re spending the night where you fall.”

Clint grunts a wordless agreement but doesn’t move away from where he’s propping up the wall until the water stops. He doesn’t know what good he’d be if she were the one who went down, but, well. Partners. He figures he could at least get Stark’s AI involved, and he hasn’t forgotten the long, ranting texts from when Natalie Rushman was keeping an eye on Stark and there’d been more than one mention of the robots who kept popping up unexpectedly. Clint figures they could pitch in, if necessary. 

Natasha doesn’t say anything when she sees Clint still standing there--which actually says a lot, since she’s not shy about voicing her opinion of what she sees as his stupidity--only nods to the pile of clothes on one of the sweeping marble counters, the one Clint honestly hasn’t noticed until now.

Clint expects basic SHIELD issue, sweats and a t-shirt, the cotton new and stiff, but instead the material is soft and rich. Expensive, even just going off the feel. 

“All part of the standard Stark hospitality package,” Natasha says, reading Clint’s mind like usual. She pulls on her own variation on the same stack and rubs a towel over her hair. There are circles dark enough to be bruises under her eyes, and the cut on her bottom lip looks like it could use some ice, but Clint doesn’t see anything else in his automatic once-over. She’s moving slowly--which, yeah, so is he--and is favoring one leg, but Clint’s seen her function through much much worse. Of course, it’s been a hell of a long time since Clint himself was responsible for any of it--

“Bed.” Natasha shoves him out of the doorway and he lets the momentum carry him across the cool hardwoods and into the biggest bed he’s seen outside of Vegas. Natasha crawls under the layers of sheets and comforters, on the right side like always. She curls on her side to face him, and one side of her mouth curves up in the smallest of smiles when he does the same. They've slept in the same bed more times than he can remember: back-to-back when they're expecting trouble but have to rest; wrapped around each other when they're likely to freeze before the sun comes back up, whoever's hurt worst having to be the little spoon; face-to-face when they need to connect. If it’s never been more than that, Clint has long since come to terms with how very good what he has is. 

“Thanks,” Clint says, his voice catching hard in his throat. He’s said it already, but he doesn’t think it’ll hurt anything if he says it again. He mostly expects her to tell him to shut up again, or at least roll her eyes at him; it's how they are, how they deal with all the shit that rightfully should bury them. He's caught flat-footed, completely off his game, when she reaches out instead, fingertips tracing his cheekbone before she fits her hands to his jaw. Clint closes his eyes and tries to focus; there's more he wants to say, more than he needs to say, because he's not talking so much about whatever she did to get him back, but more that she came after him in the first place, but he… can't. 

"I knew you were there," Natasha says, her voice worn. Clint’s been on her side of the equation before, when the situation’s shot to hell and nobody has any idea of what they’re going to find when they start poking. It’s when everyone finds out if they really can walk the talk, and Clint knows how goddamn lucky he was to have the team he had. “Thanks for not proving me wrong.”

Clint turns his head enough that he can press a kiss to her palm. “I’d say ‘anytime,’” he finally manages, even if it doesn’t come out as much more than a whisper, “but I’m really fucking hoping that never happens again, so.”

“No argument there,” Natasha murmurs, and Clint’s asleep before he can even see if she’s smiling.

* * *

This isn’t Natasha’s first go-round with this situation; she isn’t surprised when she comes awake already reaching for where Clint is fighting his way out of the hold his nightmares have on him. He fights her, too, mindless and desperate and silent until he jolts himself awake. She sees recognition flicker in his eyes, but then he throws himself away from her and off the bed. 

“Easy,” Natasha croons at him. “Easy, соколёнок.”

He stares at her, his pupils so large she can see them even in the small slice of light let in by the separation in the blackout curtains. She knows that terror, the utter confusion as to which set of memories are real, the hideous gut punch when you realize you can't tell. She holds herself still and composed, matching her breath to his painful gasps, and then slows her rhythm as imperceptibly as she can. To her relief--she doesn't know how much energy she has herself or whether it will be enough to take the appropriate actions--Clint's breath slows with hers. 

"Nat," he finally says, his voice rough and uneven, but solid and real, and she sags back against the mattress, all but swamped with relief that he’s back with her. “I-- Fuck, this sucks.” 

“It does,” Natasha agrees, still flat on her back. Clint pulls his knees up to his chest and puts his head down, and they breathe together for a bit. “Come back to bed,” she finally says. “Even if you don’t sleep, it’s better than the floor.”

“Yeah.” Clint keeps his head down for a long few seconds, but then, like the stubborn son-of-a-bitch she knows he is, he looks up and drags himself off the floor. “Yeah, I’m coming.”

He settles heavily on the mattress next to her, so unlike his usual controlled grace, but he doesn’t flinch away when she reaches for him, only sighs out as she wraps her hand around his biceps. She strokes along the curve of muscle with her thumb, a small, rhythmic path between the cuts and bruises. She thinks she’s trying to reassure herself as much as she is him. The thought bothers her less than it should. 

“He wanted me to kill you,” Clint says into the darkness. Natasha hates the way he sounds, worn down and flat, none of the sarcastic humor that has seen them through so many fucked-up scenarios.

“Too bad he missed the part about how well you follow orders.” Natasha makes herself answer lightly. His arm is still tense under her hand, but he chokes out something that’s close to a laugh, and she knows she’s hit the right note. “You even gave him a personal demonstration when you didn’t take the headshot with Fury.”

“He didn’t like that,” Clint mumbles. Natasha knows he has to still be exhausted; if she can get him down just a tiny bit more, he’ll be able to sleep without the drugs. She'll think about why that’s so important to her later. “Gave me shit about missing.”

“Good thing he didn’t know you as well as we do, or he’d have done more than give you shit,” Natasha murmurs. “I think Fury’s counting it as a love tap.”

“Now you’re just being mean,” Clint slurs, asleep almost before he gets the last word out, and Natasha lets herself follow.

* * *

Clint doesn’t expect much from watching Thor disappear with Loki, but once they’re gone and light from the Cube fades, something in his chest eases up. It’s not all gone, not by a long shot, but Loki being in a different dimension makes it a little easier to breathe. The team--which has somehow become Clint’s team and he’s really not sure how that happened, except he guesses that’s what happens when you end up fighting honest-to-God aliens together--splits apart soon after, but it’s the kind of split that bodes well for reunion, easy and familiar. Stark gets Banner into his car with no hassle that Clint can see; Rogers has a sweet bike and an itinerary that doesn’t seem to include anything but seeing how far he can ride. Clint gets it. That’s always been his default, but not this time.

Natasha watches him with that particular look that says there is A Plan, but she gives in gracefully when Clint starts walking instead of getting in her car. He doesn’t have anyplace particular in mind; he just knows he’s not ready to be closed in. It’s warm but not hot, and the sun is bright enough that he’s glad he has his sunglasses. From where they are now, there’s no sign that the city had nearly been torn apart by aliens, but Clint knows that a few blocks south tells an entirely different story. It’s weird, a distorted sense of reality, like an AR filter laid over his eyes. Clint finds himself wondering if it was normal, if Londoners felt like this during the Blitz, waking up to find their neighborhood fine but knowing the bombs they’d heard dropping during the night had taken their toll elsewhere. He stops thinking about that, because the only reason he had any idea about British history died on Clint’s watch, and he still can’t think about it for more than a second without feeling like he might start screaming and never stop.

“Fury wants us gone,” Natasha says quietly, and Clint realizes he’s been standing on the sidewalk, staring down toward Grand Central and where he knows the worst of the destruction is for long enough that she’s feeling the need to check in with him. 

“Gone?” Clint asks, pushing his sunglasses up onto his head and letting her see his eyes. Natasha arches an eyebrow at him, just enough to let him know the gesture is unnecessary. He answers with an equally small shrug because she might not have needed it, but he’s not sure he didn’t. “Or just off the grid?”

“He was surprisingly open to all possibilities,” Natasha says, falling into step with Clint as he turns around to back toward the car. Clint slants a disbelieving look at her, and she smiles. “It tends to happen after prolonged exposure to Stark. _Anything_ close to your mission objective starts to sound good.”

“It’s only been, what? A couple--” Clint tries like hell to keep his voice light, but halfway through he realizes he doesn’t actually know, that there’s nothing in his head from the time when Loki had him that cared about mundane details like time or place. He swallows hard and pushes the words out. “Three? Four days?”

“Six,” Natasha says, quiet and matter-of-fact. “Four between Loki taking the Tesseract and... everything here.” She touches him on the elbow and gets them moving again. “The other two we slept through, but Stark apparently was very busy being...well, Stark.”

“Is it bad that I kinda enjoy the thought of somebody out-Fury-ing the man himself?” 

“For what it’s worth,” Natasha says with one of her best arch looks, “I suppose it _is_ good to know you still have your issues with authority figures.”

“Oh, Nat,” Clint says, not sure whether he can laugh through the sudden tightness in his chest, but willing to try just about anything for her. “You have no idea.”

“Come on, Barton.” Natasha flips the locks on the car. “Whatever we’re doing, we need to be doing it somewhere that is not here.”

Clint nods slowly, because he can’t argue with that, no matter how much he wants to, but then freezes when Natasha holds out the the keys to him. He looks at her, quick and sharp, and she shrugs. He closes his eyes for a second, because yeah, it’s not really a surprise that she knew before he did that he’s at some kind of a breaking point even if he isn’t exactly sure why. Or, well, he _knows_ why he can’t push past not being in control, and she does, too. They both know why, and they both know it goes back way before Loki. Clint just doesn’t know why it’s this exact second, and he tries to let that show, because she’s the one person left that he can trust, and he needs her to know that’s still true. 

Whatever she sees in his eyes is enough; she nods once and physically puts the keys in his hand, folding it around them, and then gets in the passenger seat. 

“Thanks,” Clint says. It’s pretty inadequate, and he’s repeating himself, but it’s the best he’s got.

“Whatever you need,” Natasha replies. 

Driving is good, even in Manhattan. It’s not a bow in his hand, and there’s way too much stop-and-go to really find that zone, but the car Natasha has is a beauty under its bland exterior, and Clint enjoys getting to know it. Natasha watches him tweak the settings, adjust the seat, play with the customizable read-outs on the dash, all with a satisfied smile around her eyes; Clint thinks he might get as much ease from noticing that as he does fiddling with the car itself. He’s about to say something, but then they’re coming up on the area around Stark Tower, where all the worst of the damage is, and he doesn’t feel like making conversation. 

Natasha is silent, too. They don’t often revisit the places most deeply burned into their memories; Clint isn’t sure if that’s good or not, but it is what it is. He has memories of people working around them as they ate shawarma, everything hazy and blurred from the exhaustion that had been dragging him under; clearly, that get-it-done attitude hasn’t flagged, even if there’s still serious damage remaining. There are ConEd crews on every block and orange construction netting draped over everything. Most of the people out dealing with the mess are civilians, though Clint sees a couple big groups with people in suits and hardhats, like delegations from the mayor’s office out on official/PR business.

“Wait,” Natasha says. “Pull over here.”

Clint knows better than to argue with that tone of voice even if one of New York’s finest is bearing down on them, looking none too happy about them not following his master traffic plan. Natasha is out of the car almost before Clint gets stopped, waving a badge at the cop that has him shrugging and walking off. Clint follows more slowly; he can see where she’s headed, and he figures she can probably handle Stark’s girlfriend/CEO and her entourage without actual back-up from Clint. 

He catches Natasha’s eye as he gets up closer, and she gives him a look that says he can join her or not. He takes her at face value, trusting that if she wanted him there, she would have made it clear, and lets himself fade into the general background. He’s not quite sure how fit for executive office contact he is right now--he’s never really good with that, even at his best, which is so not where he is at the moment. It seems better to not interfere with whatever Nat’s got working and just be a part of the regular world. 

There are a half-dozen people milling around the wreckage near where he’s standing. Nobody looks to be in officially in charge, but there’s a surprising amount of work happening. They’re clearing out a small restaurant and what looks like the remnants of an electronics store. Clint watches for a few minutes, until a couple of the younger guys start trying to climb up toward where the sign for the small restaurant is hanging on by what seems to be a single bolt, and it’s plain to see they don’t really know what they’re doing. 

“Hey,” Clint calls, stripping off his hoodie and tossing it on the hood of the car. “Let me do that.” 

They look at him and shrug, backing off while he tests how much weight various footholds can take. There’s some shaky stuff, but the overall structure is okay. Clint’s climbed up worse and hey, at least right now, nobody’s shooting at him. He makes it up to where he can reach the bolt that’s holding up the sign and works it loose while the rest of them hold the sagging edges steady. He’s barely back on the ground when there’s a shout from a group on the other side of the street wanting to know if he can run a line up to the third floor so they can haul their equipment up from the outside and bypass where the stairs inside are shaky and unstable. 

Clint glances over, but Natasha is still deep in conversation with the Stark group. Standing around and talking has never been his strong suit, so he makes sure the sign is stable and jogs across the street to see if he can do what the next group is asking for. 

* * *

To Natasha’s eyes, Pepper is on edge, with the sheerest veneer of her usual competent self over something brittle and vulnerable. She’s perfectly pulled together, as always, even with a hard hat and heavy boots instead of her Louboutins, but she holds on to Natasha’s hands much longer than normal, and her voice isn’t quite composed. She introduces Natasha as Natalie, a former assistant in town with another position, which is close enough to reality that Natasha can’t help smiling. Pepper returns it, but hesitantly, as though she can’t quite process the reality of that position. Natasha doesn’t blame her in the slightest. She’s not sure she’s processed it herself, and she was the one standing on the street, back-to-back with the rest of the Avengers. 

In typical form, though, Pepper is dealing with it by already being on the ground and working with municipal offices on how best to coordinate short-term clean-up and long-term rebuilding. To Natasha’s always-assessing eye, the SI team is the most organized group she’s seen so far, and she knows that the credit for that goes to the woman in front of her. Natasha gets the need to make things better, but there’s _so much,_ and she’s not entirely sure Pepper can accept that she won’t be able to fix everything. 

Natasha starts to say something along those lines, but Pepper is eyeing Natasha with the look she generally brings to bear on Tony at his most recalcitrant and clearly is not buying a second of Natasha’s no-I’m-fine-really, so it’s entirely possible that they have each other’s number and will not be put off by even the best BS. It’s been... a very long time since someone who was not Clint or Coulson has looked at Natasha that way.

Before either of them can push any further, Pepper’s group needs to move on. She scribbles a number on the back of a card for Natasha--“No electronics, and no, I know you can’t give me a number”--and is gone in a swirl of her black Burberry trench. Natasha tucks the card away carefully and then turns to find Clint. She finally locates him halfway up the front of an older office building, which really isn’t a surprise, but at least he’s wearing a harness. The building he’s climbing doesn’t look particularly stable to Natasha’s eyes, but there’s a building inspector’s certificate on one of the boarded-over windows and a group on the ground watching him climb, so she doesn’t think he’s indulging in a deathwish. Or not any more than usual, even if the facade is crumbling before he can get over it and is forcing him into alternate routes. At the very least, no one is shooting at him, Natasha thinks. 

A few storefronts down from the one Clint’s scaling, there’s a rainbow striped umbrella set up in front of the shattered front window, with a couple of teenagers manning some coolers. Natasha picks her way through the shattered glass and buckled pavement and waits her turn in the small line that's formed. The kids have sandwiches in one cooler and bottled water in the other, basic but welcome; especially the sandwiches, which are oversized even by the American standards to which Natasha still hasn't quite accustomed herself.

"Everything's going to go bad pretty soon," one of the boys says. "Might as well just make 'em big and sell out before that happens."

After a second or two of deliberation, Natasha takes four. Neither she nor Clint have been enthusiastic about food since Stark dragged them out for shawarma, but if it's there in front of them force of habit will take over. She lived on protein shakes during the whole mess; she's not sure if Clint even ate while Loki had him. Selvig hadn't--in his words, the Cube had sustained him--but Natasha is hoping Clint retained enough control to get something into his system. It's not something he'll want to talk about, and she's not his therapist in any case, but if she doesn't make a big deal out of it she thinks he'll probably eat without noticing.

By the time Natasha gets everything back to the car and settles herself on the hood, Clint has gotten the line he's carrying up to a third-floor window and--idiot that he is--has decided to ignore what she can see from a block away are the shakes that come from overworking already-compromised muscles and is coming back down the front of the building. Natasha makes herself sit and watch; he'll shut down if she even says anything about it, much less if she’s right there under him as he comes down. It's also possible that she's over-reacting; she knows he's made worse climbs with far more significant injuries. Plus, there’s the harness, which means that he might be ignoring the reality of overworked muscles but he prepared for the eventuality. 

Natasha breathes deliberately and picks a random sandwich, so that once Clint reaches the ground--after a bone-jarring drop of the last ten feet, the _idiot_ , she can see his spine compress with the jolt from where she’s sitting--she’s calmly eating when he straightens up and turns slowly to look for her. Once he sees her, she picks up her phone and cycles aimlessly through messages that don’t have any relevance in this new world of aliens and demi-gods. It helps keep her from glaring at her stupid, _stupid_ partner as he walks up to her, peeling completely inadequate climbing gloves off his hands and surreptitiously scrubbing his palms against his jeans to clean away the blood from the split blisters. 

“Eat,” Natasha says, pushing the bag of sandwiches toward him. In lieu of preemptively yelling at him for not taking care of himself, she bites somewhat savagely into her own pastrami-on-rye. He notices, of course, but takes the hint and doesn’t argue with her. The pastrami is excellent, far too good for the methodical, mechanical way they’re both eating, but they _are_ eating, and Natasha is going to be satisfied with that for the moment. 

“Thanks,” Clint mumbles as he shoves the last third of the sandwich in his mouth and reaches for a bottle of water. He downs it in three long swallows and reaches for another. Natasha adds ‘dehydration’ to her list of things to watch out for. They’d had him on IV saline in Medical, but not for long enough. He downs the second bottle at a more normal pace and then starts in on the next sandwich. Natasha manages not to smile approvingly at him, because that’ll only make him conscious of just how closely she’s watching him, but she does smile internally.

For sitting on the hood of a car in the middle of a bombed out street, it’s a surprisingly peaceful break. Clint ends up leaning back against the windshield and stretching his legs out; Natasha is tempted to lie back flat on the hood, but it’s probably better if one of them stays on alert, and Clint’s got his eyes closed. 

“I know we’re supposed to be getting gone,” he says, “but...”

“You want to stay,” Natasha says.

“Yeah.” Clint doesn’t open his eyes, but Natasha knows she’s under scrutiny. “It felt good to help.”

“You’ve already helped,” she points out. “We wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t.”

“I can do more,” he says. His jaw is set, and Natasha doesn’t have the energy to fight him. If she’s being honest, she doesn’t really have the inclination either. They can go to ground here in the city almost as effectively as they can anywhere else. 

“Fine.” She gives in to temptation and lies back, the sun warm on her face. “But we are not staying in that hellhole you call an apartment.”

“You don’t have to stay with--”

“Yes,” Natasha says, not bothering to look at him. Where does the idiot think she’d go? “I do.”


	2. Chapter 2

Natasha has bolt-holes all over the world. Some Clint knows, but there are others, like the small studio down near NYU that she unlocks with a key she retrieves from a post office box in Midtown, that are on a strictly need-to-know basis. She stands aside to let Clint go in before her and then closes the door firmly after them.

"Ready?" Natasha asks. When Clint nods, she starts setting the alarms and fail-safes. Clint makes himself pay close attention; there's no telling what's rigged to happen if he doesn't get the sequence and each setting right. He has her go through the whole scenario twice, and then does it once himself before they're satisfied he won't trigger anything accidentally.

"I’d ask for the tour but I think I’ve got it,” Clint says, eyeing the small space dubiously. He and Natasha have gone to ground in smaller and far less conveniently located places over the years, but he’s not sure how well they’re going to do in only a couple hundred square feet right now. 

“The electricity and water are on, and I have a grocery delivery on the way,” Natasha says, unperturbed by his attitude. “Also, I’m not in the mood to have to wear shoes in the shower to keep the grunge at bay.”

“High-maintenance,” Clint mutters, but he kind of loses any edge he might have had when he can’t help whimpering at how good it feels to sink down into her overstuffed couch. He’s expecting an elbow to the ribs or at least a head smack, but she just drops down next to him and flicks his forehead. “C’mon,” he groans. “I don’t look _that_ bad, do I?”

“Truth?” Natasha asks.

“Never mind,” Clint mumbles. The last climb might not have been the best idea, not that he’s going to admit it out loud. He really must look like shit because Nat lets him sprawl out in peace, at least until the grocery delivery arrives. Even then she doesn’t insist he follow whatever insanely complicated system she has in place so she can fit more than a day’s worth of food in her tiny kitchen area, just lets him see how high he can stack things on top of each other. He’s semi-pleased to say that his hands have steadied up again, and if he’s not in top form, he’s at least not completely hopeless. 

He is tired enough not to object when she makes noises like she's going to take care of the actual cooking part of feeding them. She's not bad in the kitchen--she's not bad at anything, not that Clint's ever found--but she doesn't generally enjoy it. The food she produces is always edible, but no one is ever going to mistake her for a chef. It used to piss her off to no end that Clint can take a tough cut of meat and a couple of suspect-looking vegetables and turn it into something pretty damn tasty, but she’d gotten over it. Clint’s not sure that’s any better--now there’s the expectation that he feeds them no matter where they are--but he guesses it shows the progress in their relationship. 

He sits back down on the couch and tries to stay awake. He doesn’t quite make it, but he’s not totally out when the blue reaches out for him, so it only takes him a few seconds to jolt his brain out of it. They’re endless, the way dream time always is, and his heart is racing when he comes back to himself, but he’s still on the couch, and he hasn’t broken anything or thrown the knife tucked in his boot. 

Natasha is watching him, but she’s still across the room; from that, he takes that he really did get himself back out of the bad place pretty quickly. 

“Just so you know, I still find this disgusting,” she says and sets a bottle of Gatorade on the tiny bar in front of her. She loathes the stuff, won’t touch it unless they’re out in the field and teetering on the edge of dehydration, hates the artificial color and flavor so much that it’s not allowed in any space she’s claimed for her own. There still had been a case of it in the grocery delivery, the orange kind that he’s been addicted to for decades, one of the few things he willingly carries with him from his circus days when it had been the rarest of treats.

“Thanks,” Clint mutters, taking the bottle with hands that somehow aren’t shaking. He’d be prouder of that if his eyes weren’t still skittering looks to the corners, waiting for the blue to come back for him. He chugs the bottle, and Nat nods once at him. She’s got that look on her face, the one that says she’s mentally tracking his intake of fluids, but since he has an equivalent one that he pulls out for her, his brain doesn’t give the automatic, pushback it generally wants to throw at people hovering over him. He caps the now-empty bottle and throws it across the room and behind her to ring the trash can and then flops back down on the couch and pretends like he’s channel-surfing because he wants to actually watch something, rather than to just fill up the echoes in his head.

* * *

The volume on the TV comes on very low--Natasha tends to use it as background noise more than anything--but Clint doesn't turn it up, just clicks aimlessly from channel to channel. Normally, that drives Natasha insane, but it's not so bad now when the list of things the two of them really don't want to talk about is at an all-time high. She lets herself get away with shying away from talking for as long as it takes to pack things away, but then she settles onto the couch next to Clint and waits for him to turn to her. It takes him awhile, but they don't ignore each other, no matter how bad things are, so she waits patiently.

"How long you figure we have before Fury realizes we’re not playing along like good soldiers?"

"Maybe a week," Natasha answers. "But he might cut us a little slack after that. He really wants the team gone, if only for plausible deniability to the Council, but… I think he wants you right in the head a little bit more."

"Yeah, well, we both know that'll take longer than a week," Clint snorts.

"Relatively speaking," Natasha amends. She picks up his hand and turns it palm up in her lap. "We can get to the point where you're not tearing yourself apart, though."

"Maybe," Clint says, but he doesn't pull his hand away. The moment stretches out, more intimate somehow than sleeping in the same bed or showering with him still in the room. Natasha traces the worst of the blisters, her touch as light as she can make it. She keeps her eyes on their hands, marveling that he trusts her not to hurt him. When she finally looks up and meets his gaze, he nods once and says, "I'll try."

“Thank you,” Natasha says. She’s suddenly too tired to move, the events of the day crashing down on her and nothing that needs to be done there to counter the weight. She expects Clint to move, to roam the small space of the apartment in an effort to keep the distance he's always needed, but he stays on the small couch with her and even settles the TV on something not loud and obnoxious. She stares at it for a few minutes and realizes it's a gardening show, which is so out of character she has to bite back the automatic _Who are you and what have you done with my partner_. She's fairly certain Clint would appreciate it--black humor is what he does best, after all--but she can't, not just yet. She'll get there, but Loki and the spear are a little too recent. She can't not comment on it though, so she settles for arching an eyebrow at him.

"What? I can't like documentaries?" He can't even keep a straight face, so she doesn't bother trying herself. "Yeah, okay," he says. "It's not my usual, but… It'll put you to sleep. Not to get up in your face, but you look like you need it."

He’s blunt, but not unkind, very much the Clint she’s always known despite everything that’s come down on him. Natasha is ridiculously grateful for that, even as she’s narrowing her eyes at him. 

"And you don't?"

"Not saying that, but let's not get crazy and think I'm just gonna nod off without being more or less dead on my feet." He meets her eyes steadily. "I figure I’m gonna need to switch off sleeping for a while."

He doesn’t say he thinks she’ll need it, too, but she does, and she knows that he knows it. That’s Clint, too--always ready to lay the cause on himself if he thinks it’ll make life easier. It annoys the shit out of her when he does it to her, which he also knows, but he’s giving her the let-it-slide look, too. In deference to the truly shitty week they’ve had, she decides she can give him a break just this once. 

“Fine,” Natasha sighs, curling her legs up under her and laying her head back on the cushions. On the TV, they’re talking about soil enrichment and proper aeration which, if nothing else, is going to prove Clint right in the putting-Natasha-to-sleep assessment, and soon. “Enjoy your evening’s entertainment.”

“As much as it hurts me to give you free blackmail material, I think I have to admit that this is about as much excitement as I can take,” Clint says, and Natasha falls asleep with a smile curving her mouth. It’s nice to think it starts her sleep off well, but she’s not surprised when it doesn’t last. Clint wakes her a few hours later, ducking with practiced ease out of range of the punch she throws.

“I don’t know, Romanoff,” Clint says, handing her a bottle of water. “You used to be faster with the trying to take my head off thing. You losing your edge?”

“Says the guy I beat down last week,” Natasha answers immediately,even if she’s still breathless from the Chitauri she’d been fighting in the dream. Clint snorts. “Think of it as a gift,” Natasha continues. “To make up for the concussion.”

“You do know how to show a guy a good time.”

“I try.” Natasha finishes the water and tries to gauge Clint’s state. He lets her look for about two seconds, but that’s longer than she expected.

“Crash out again,” he says. “I’m not even close to going down.” 

“You can’t stay awake for the entire night,” Natasha tells him. “Don’t make it worse.”

“Yeah, no, I know,” Clint sighs. “Just... not yet.” He shrugs at her, but he’s meeting her eyes, so she decides not to press him for more.

“Wake me if you need me to keep watch,” Natasha says finally. He nods, and she settles back into the couch. Neither one of them is talking about how Natasha isn’t moving to the bed and Clint isn’t suggesting it; how they’re both more than okay with being right on top of each other on Natasha’s small couch. In all honesty, they have precedent for this; they spent the first three months after Natasha came in sleeping in shifts. Most of the reason they’re not talking about it is that the shift-sleeping happened on the couch in Coulson’s office, and neither one of them is ready to touch that subject. 

Natasha gets another two hours before her brain recreates the walkways and ladders of the ‘carrier and the endless minutes it had taken her to find her center after running for her life. She wakes herself up before Clint can do it, more grateful than she expects to see he’s got every light and lamp in the studio on and her electric kettle already hot. The familiar ritual of making tea--and listening to Clint complain about the smell of Earl Grey--does a good job of driving away the miasma of fear and hopelessness the dreams had smothered her with. 

Clint roams the small room while she brews her tea and sets out more of his disgusting sports drink, but throws himself back down on the couch when she settles herself into a corner. His eyes are red-rimmed, and she notices the fine tremor in his hands. She shouldn't comment on either--Clint has many good qualities, but accepting personal physical limitations has never ranked highly in his skillset--but he's as close to the edge as she's ever seen him. She doesn't know quite what to say, which is unnerving, but Couson had always been the one to deal with Clint like this. She doesn't want to bring all that that entails into the conversation, but she finds that it's impossible to sit and watch as she usually does. "I think it's my turn to keep watch," she finally says.

"You should try again--"

"No." Natasha shakes her head at Clint and his exceedingly fine trigger for being manipulated. "I think I've reached my limit on dealing with dreams tonight." He's not in a place where he can sort through anything that smacks of pity or charity; it's helpful that the simple truth actually lines up with the easiest way for him to accept her offer. She lifts one shoulder in a shrug, one that he'll translate as 'what can you do?' "You know I process better if I don't push it."

"Yeah, you and me both," Clint says, putting his feet--without boots, she's happy to notice--up on the trunk she uses as a coffee table. He closes his eyes and is quiet for a few seconds before he says, "Don't let me tear things up."

"I won't," Natasha promises.

"I can't believe I just gave you my blessing to kick me in the head again," Clint sighs.

"As if I needed your blessing."

One corner of his mouth quirks up in the half-smile that had annoyed her endlessly in the first few months they'd worked together, until she'd understood that it was his most basic defense against the world that had done its best to tear him down from before he was old enough to understand. 

“As if,” he murmurs, more than amusement in his tone, something like satisfaction. Natasha breathes out a small laugh as she picks a book at random and settles down to watch over him. 

Natasha can almost set a clock by Clint's dreams. He's tired himself out enough that his mission training can take over, so he falls asleep with minimal effort, but within an hour, he's thrown himself off the couch with a low, feral whine that makes her hope Asgardian justice is as atavistic as the legends make it out to be. She keeps all that out of her expression, though, and merely hands him a bottle of water. He’s doing his best to ignore everything from the way his hands are shaking to the tears on his face; she is not going to add to what he's already carrying. 

She half-expects to have to argue to get him back to sleep, but once he’s stumbled into the bathroom and ducked his head under the faucet, he drops back down on the couch. “Round two,” he mutters.

She knows he’s deliberately slowing his heart and breathing, the way he does when he’s in a nest, waiting for the shot. It takes longer than usual, but it works, and he gets another hour. This time, he barely makes a sound, but it takes him long seconds to see her when she calls his name. The third time’s the charm, with almost two full hours. It’s almost dawn when he jolts awake, though, and he doesn’t pretend to even try for more, ,just goes and stands under the shower and takes the coffee Natasha pushes toward him.

“I don’t suppose you have an actual plan,” Natasha says.

“Figured I’d just wing it,” Clint answers. “Head up toward Grand Central and do whatever needs doing.” 

Natasha nods and pushes one of the phones Stark had been handing around across the small bar. “I wouldn’t guarantee that Stark isn’t listening in, but he’s still pretty pissed at Fury, so SHIELD isn’t going to be tracking these just yet.” She turns hers on and waits for Clint to follow. “If I promise not to call and check up on you, will you at least keep it turned on so I can come pull you out of whatever building is no doubt waiting to collapse on you?”

“You say that like it happens all the time,” Clint says, giving her the wounded doe eyes, as if they might erase any of her very specific memories. When she taps the phone, he sighs. “Yeah, okay, so it maybe happens more often to me than is strictly likely. Hazard of the job, not my fault, I’ll be careful, and yeah, I’ll carry the phone. Happy?”

“Ecstatic,” Natasha says dryly, and he’s out the door with a pocketful of protein bars. For the first time in she can’t remember how long, no one is waiting for her, or expecting anything from her. She turns the morning news shows on; every network is, predictably enough, live on the streets of Manhattan, interviewing and reporting and pontificating. The human-interest stories irritate her far less than she expects; the politicians annoy her far more. There are already telethons and benefits being scheduled: a televised rock concert at the Garden, a fine arts benefit gala sponsored by the Maria Stark Foundation, an impromptu Restaurant Week across the city. Natasha drinks her coffee and deliberately doesn’t think about how Phil Coulson would have loved that, or who Sitwell might be able to con into going with him now. 

Natasha shakes herself out of that thought and goes to the small yoga studio she favors when she has free time in Manhattan. There are a half-dozen dojos she could visit as well, but she can’t find it in her to work on her attacks or even her defenses. Better to open her core and let her body find its way back to center. Fortunately, there aren’t many others with the same idea; her hour at the studio is spent in near-solitude and she comes to a not unexpected realization; the day stretches out endlessly in front of her, and she is still not one to sit idly by. 

She could follow Clint’s lead--clearing the destruction by hand would be satisfying on an elemental level--but for all that, it doesn’t quite feel right to her. There are other opportunities, though. The card Pepper had given her is still tucked away in her jacket pocket. She dials the number on it, and when it’s answered by a distracted assistant, she says, “Natalie Rushman calling for Ms. Potts,” and waits for the call to be transferred.

* * *

Realistically, Clint knows one guy, no matter how motivated, isn’t going to make or break the city’s clean-up efforts, but he can’t not be out on the streets helping. After the first day, when he’s not entirely sure how he makes it back to Natasha’s apartment because he works until he’s about to drop and had kind of forgotten to stop and eat during the day, he makes sure to carry water and protein bars with him. And by ‘makes sure to’ he means he shows he has them in a backpack so Natasha will let him step outside the door in the morning.

As a peace offering--because, yeah, that had been really stupid, and he’d maybe been a little closer to passing out than he’d first thought, and he hadn’t meant to scare the shit out of her but he had--he makes a point to fix breakfast for the both of them every morning before he leaves. He can’t do anything about the part where he’s working himself to the point of exhaustion every day, because that’s the only way he’s getting even three or four hours of sleep a night, but he hears Phil’s voice sometimes, that dryly polite tone reminding him that well-hydrated agents were better equipped to deal with whatever was trying to kill them, and he tries to keep up with that, too. 

It’s easier than he’d thought to keep out of the way of SHIELD groups out scouring the streets for alien tech. They usually cordon off the area they’re working on and keep civilians back. Clint’s more than happy to comply. He doesn’t stay with any one group for long. People like to bond, especially in situations like this, and he’s not looking for comradery. He has--or had, he’s not sure if that’s still true after everything--his people. He’ll sort that out later. He just wants to clear one more storefront, help one more family figure out whether it’s okay to go back into their place. 

He keeps his head down and his mouth shut--something that any number of handlers probably wouldn’t believe, but it’s the truth. He hears a shit-ton of rumors; a new and crazier set every day. He keeps his mouth shut there, too, though he stores up some of the more entertaining ones to harass Stark with. 

The only time he breaks cover is somewhere at the start of the second week. The guys he’s working with aren’t bad, but they’re tired and frustrated, and the reality of the bombed-out city is starting to sink in, and they’re blowing off steam by bitching about the government and the Avengers and everything about them.

“It’s un-American, that’s what it is,” the loudest one is saying. “Making like that pretty boy is Captain America. How stupid do they think we are?” 

(Clint wishes there was some way he could record this. From what Natasha has said, he bets he could get Cap to turn ten shades of red at the ‘pretty boy.’) 

“Might be treason, you know?” They head off to work on boarding up windows, and Clint’s happy enough to leave them behind on the ground floor. 

The building they’re working on has been around for a while, and some of the residents have been, too. There’s this one old guy, ninety if he’s a day, and he doesn’t like what he’s hearing, because it turns out that not only had he seen Cap during the Chitauri invasion, he’d also seen him 70 years ago in France. He’s a tough old guy; Clint can tell he’s not gonna back down no matter how hard of a time the work crew is giving him. They think he’s senile and delusional, but once the loudmouths are back out on the street, Clint looks at the old guy and says, “Sharp eyes, sir.”

“Used to be the sharpest, but I do alright for the times. Good enough to know what I saw even if I don’t know how it might be true.”

“There’s a file a foot thick on how, and about three people in the world understand it,” Clint says, thinking of Coulson and his near-giddiness to get his hands on said file. It’s the first time his brain hasn’t flinched away from memories like that. 

They sit there in the late afternoon sun for a while, and then the old guy nods and says to Clint, “I’m not asking how you know that, but I thank you for sharing it with me.” He shakes Clint’s hand, and Clint hears him laughing to himself, a clear _How about that_ , as Clint leaves.

Cap just has that effect on people. 

Clint’s group is long gone--not that he cares much--and he could go link up with another crew, but talking about Cap has stirred up a lot of shit Clint’s been keeping buried as deep as he can, and he’s probably better off where he doesn’t have to interact with people directly. He should go home and lock himself away, but he can’t turn away from watching the city crews swarm all over Grand Central, taking care of everything he hadn’t been able to stop. It’s not exactly the brightest idea he’s had, sitting out in public while he unpacks it all, Loki and Selvig and the Cube and the blue, but it is what it is, and when it comes right down to it, it’s _his_ choice, and that’s what he holds onto when it all seems like it’s going to pull him under and never let him go.

People move around and past him with a particular care; in between the shakes, he guesses he’s not the only idiot who’s decided to haul his PTSD out in public. Nobody says anything to him, but when he finally gets his shit together a couple of mounted cops nod to him and move on. It takes him a long few minutes to realize they weren’t coming back, that they’d been sitting and keeping watch over him. 

The long summer twilight is fading toward dark when he finally makes it back to Natasha’s and carefully starts to work his way through the alarms. It’s still earlier than he usually comes in--most times, he stays out until full night, until only the city crews with their own generators can work in the affected areas, the blocks where the power is still spotty. He’s worn down enough that it takes him longer than it should to wonder where Natasha is, or what she might be doing with her days. He can call her, of course, but by the time his exhausted brain has worked that out, she’s there next to him, a rush of silk and careful make-up and the slightest trace of perfume.

Clint would ask, but he has to pay attention to the lock sequence, because he will be damned if he’s admitting defeat and letting her do it, and then, when they’re inside, it’s all he can do to stand still and hold it together under her scrutiny. He slaps down the part of him that wants to go wedge himself in a corner and wait for the dawn and makes himself go through their normal routine, shower and food and a quick review of SHIELD’s daily agent updates. Natasha lets him go without comment, at least until there’s nothing left to do and he’s back to pacing, as bad as he was on the first night. Even then, she doesn’t say anything, just shifts over on the couch and lets him lay down with his head in her lap. 

The breath that shudders out of him is probably a blinking neon sign pointing to just how close he is to the edge, but she still doesn’t call him on it. “May I?” she murmurs, combing her fingers through his hair. He mumbles something that she correctly interprets as a _fuck, yes, please_ , and if he doesn’t actually sleep, he’s at least more relaxed than he could have imagined. Natasha is, too, at least until Clint rolls off the couch in the gray, pre-dawn light and starts getting ready for the day, assembling his pack, work gloves and water and the climbing harness that’s gotten more use in the last two weeks than the rest of the time he’s owned it combined. 

“Still?” she asks, with an edge to her voice that Clint hasn’t heard in years. 

Clint knows what she’s saying, and in his head, he knows she’s making sense, but-- He shrugs and keeps packing up. 

“The last weeks, whatever happened yesterday--? It’s still not enough?” She’s still on the couch, her hands flat on her thighs as though she’s consciously willing them to stay still, as though she wants to grab hold of him and knows what a bad idea it’d be.

“No,” Clint says flatly. He slings his pack over one shoulder and reaches for a protein shake. “It’s not, and you’re the last person I thought I’d have to explain myself to.”

“I’m not asking you to explain yourself to me,” Natasha snaps. She breathes once, slowly, and continues, “I’m asking you to trust me enough to think about what you’re doing, because I’m sitting here, watching you punish yourself and--”

“You don’t have to be here,” Clint snaps back, and he knows he’s handling this badly; he _knows_ it. Knowing doesn’t mean he can shut his mouth, though. “Technically, we’re not partners these days. We’re both free agents--I can do whatever I goddamn well want, and you can be in the wind if you don’t like it.”

“Out of sight, out of mind--that’s your answer? If I don’t have to watch you tear yourself apart, it won’t be a problem?” She’s on her feet now, all but hissing at him. “Because that’s idiotic, even for you.”

They stare at each other for long, long seconds, before Clint chokes out something that’s trying--and failing--to be a laugh. “Idiotic,” he says. “Yeah, that’s about right.” He deactivates the alarm system and gets the door open. “Sorry, darlin’, but that’s the best I’ve got right now.” 

He doesn’t finish with _maybe ever_ , but he thinks it, and from the burst of Russian that follows him out the door, she knows it. He halfway expects her to follow, but the door stays closed, and there are no shadows that follow him as he makes his way down the street and to the subway. He stands on the platform, alone in the middle of the early morning rush, and deliberately doesn’t think about about Russian curses and how much it takes to push his partner (because she is, no matter what stupidity had come out of his mouth) to slipping back to using them. He syncs up with a group near the Tower and tries to find the quiet place inside his head, the one that he’s been finding in the rhythm of fixing the city. 

It takes longer than it usually does--not a surprise, given the morning--but he does find it. It doesn’t even surprise him to come out of the zone when they break for lunch and realize his subconscious has been working through the fight with Natasha while the rest of his brain dealt with the damage from one of the really big space whales. That’s pretty normal; get his conscious mind out of the way and he can sort through the shit that’s bugging him much better. What surprises him is that what he’s got from five hours of distraction is that he really is an idiot (yeah, okay that part isn’t a surprise either) who’s been so wrapped up in his own shit, he’s missed every tell his partner has let slip as to how close she is to losing hers. 

It takes him the better part of an hour to get back down to the apartment, which is, of course, empty. He doesn’t know why he thought Natasha Romanoff, of all people, had been sitting around doing nothing while he’s been out indulging himself in the guilt trip to end all guilt trips but he’s going to go with how it just fits right in there with all the rest of his obliviousness. The apartment is neat and quiet, but Natasha’s go-bag is still in its place so Clint is going to assume she hasn’t just walked. Not that he’d blame her if she had, but it at least gives him a chance to get his shit together, if only marginally, and start pulling his weight in their partnership again. The phone she’d pressed on him the first day has her number programmed into it but when he calls, it goes straight to a generic voicemail. He calls twice more before he goes ahead and hits the GPS locator for her phone. She’ll still probably have plenty to say about him just showing up at--he overlays a street grid on the locator--at Lincoln Center, whatever the fuck she’s doing there, but he’ll deal with that when it happens. 

As it turns out, it happens exactly three seconds after he tracks her down backstage in all her slightly-too-sexy-to-be-professional, Natalie-Rushman glory. That’s longer than he’d expected it might take, but, given how her face goes blank when she turns around and finds him standing there, he’s actually managed to surprise her. To be honest, Clint’s at least as surprised that he’s gotten that reaction, so they’re standing there staring each other for what counts as an eternity in spy/assassin time before she spins on her heel and starts off down the corridor. Seeing how she’d have figured out how to deck him and not break her cover if she didn’t want him there, Clint follows along. He sort of remembers hearing gossip about Stark’s foundation hosting a fundraiser, but he’d had some vague thought of over-dressed people standing around congratulating themselves on how giving they were, not this full-on mob that’s like a cross-section of the city itself. 

People swirl around them, teamsters and executives mixed in with musicians carrying their instruments in backpacks and dancers in sweats with their toe shoes slung around their necks. Clint sidesteps a group pushing heavy carts filled with bottles--to stock the bars, he guesses--and then nearly gets trapped in a flock of school kids practicing their harmonies. Natasha grabs his elbow and tows him to safety. Every other step, there’s someone _oh-Ms-Rushman_ -ing her, needing her sign-off or filling her in on progress or hell, Clint can barely figure out half of it, but Natasha still manages to hiss at him, “You didn’t have enough time to dismiss my concerns this morning, you had to come stalk me now to tell me again?”

If he hadn’t seen her floored because he’d shown up, Clint would be taking her at face value, because she is almost perfect in her reaction. Since he did see that, he looks closer and doesn’t like it at all. He doubts anyone else notices, but with Natasha, it’s the little things that matter. Her lipstick color is a tiny bit too bright for Natalie, and she’s not wearing the right kind of jewelry, and that’s before Clint gets to the part where he can see stress lines at the corners of her eyes. It all fits with the things he’s seen but not processed, and somebody really needs to kick his ass.

“Actually, I came to apologi--” Clint starts, but then they’ve arrived at what’s apparently Natalie’s command center backstage. It has one of Stark’s best heads-up, holographic displays, two assistants who are both on the phone and typing non-stop at the same time, and a dead-on perfect view of the stage, which is currently occupied by an entire fucking troupe of ballerinas. Clint did not grow up with knowledge of any kind of dancers other than the girls who worked the sideshow tents, but that all changed once he made the choice not to put the Black Widow down. He damn well knows them now, and these are classically-trained, world-class ballerinas in the middle of the one ballet that is burned into his brain. 

He turns back slowly to where Natasha is carefully flipping through a series of projections and waits until she can’t possibly misconstrue his silence. He’ll never outwait her, but he can still make his point. “I came to apologize and check in with you, but this is bullshit, Nat--”

“Leave it,” Natasha says. “It’s fine.” Before Loki, before Clint had set things in motion, things that were going to take years to fade, before the Chitauri and the Hulk and _Phil_ , Clint might have done just that. Now, though, now he sees how tight her mouth is and the way she’s never still, and he isn’t walking away.

“Nat.” Clint shuts down everything loud and pissed off in his brain and manages to speak calmly enough that she lets him take her hand. Her manicure isn’t quite perfect (another sign he’d seen but not noticed) and he strokes the pad of his thumb across the ragged edge of her cuticle. They don’t talk about this kind of stuff, about what Clint chooses not to remember of his childhood and what Natasha can’t ever be sure of; about the lives they lived before they forged a partnership out of sheer stubbornness. They don't talk about it, but Natasha had followed right after him when he'd gone to ~~hunt down~~ deal with Barney, and Clint had been the only person allowed in the room when the life the Red Room had constructed for Natalia had started to come apart at the seams. 

"Hearing this--" Clint jerks his head toward the orchestra, which is blasting along toward the finale, a piece of music that he recognizes only because he sat with her while she told him the choreography she remembered learning, every step precise and detailed, and not one true memory among them all-- "It makes _me_ want to scream." He doesn’t say _Are you sure you know what you’re doing?_ , but he doesn’t do much to keep that out of his voice.

Natasha shrugs, but doesn’t say anything. Clint waits her out; if she wants him gone she’ll say it, so he’s just going to hang around until then.

"Natalie doesn't care about the ballet. She doesn't have history with it." Natasha looks down at their hands, not meeting his eyes, but she doesn't take her hand back. Clint remembers her voice all those years ago, her composure precise and razor-edged as she told him the story of the choreography they’d made her believe she’d learned, the story of the girl who was nothing but a doll. The thought of it still makes him sick with rage. Natasha laces their fingers together and Clint reminds himself for the thousandth time that it’s not about him. Natasha shakes her head once, like she knows what he’s thinking, and adds, "It’s-- She's just trying to help."

"And that's admirable," Clint says. "It is. But you know I don't give a good goddamn about Natalie." Natasha's hand tightens on his, and Clint doesn't really have words for what that means to him. He just holds on and hopes she gets it. 

"You like her wardrobe," Natasha says after a couple of seconds. Her smile is tiny, but real.

"Who doesn't?" Clint manages what he thinks is a pretty reasonable smirk, and Natasha answers in kind. "Doesn't mean I'm distracted enough to miss how much I don’t like the rest of the set-up."

Natasha's phone vibrates on the desk; Clint can see the assistants hovering out of the corner of his eye. No one is interrupting them yet, but it's clearly only a matter of time.

"It'll all be finished tonight." Natasha is quiet and serious, and Clint is acutely conscious that they're still holding hands. "We can deal with the ramifications then."

"Or not," Clint says. "We can let it go if that’s what works… Just don't tell me it's fine."

"Pot, kettle?" 

"Yeah, we're a mess," Clint says. He hesitates for a second before he adds, "Partners, right?"

"Yes," Natasha replies in the tone that means that she wasn't the one who cast doubt on the subject in the first place. Clint shrugs his yes-I’m-an-idiot apology, and Natasha rolls her eyes at him. "Now, please go before someone decides to call security on you,” she says in Natalie’s voice. “You don't have a badge, and Ms. Potts is a stickler for the details."

“So much for having an in with the boss,” Clint says, finally letting go of Natasha’s hand and stepping back. She flicks her fingers in a _go, already_ motion, and the assistants and their teams descend in a rush of sharp-cut suits and blinking tablets. The dancers are off the stage, and their place is being taken by what looks to be the entire cast of a Broadway show. Clint makes it around the cables and cameras from WNET without tripping, but then nearly takes the head off some event-planner type who comes up behind him and taps him on the shoulder. 

“Sorry,” Clint mutters, doing his best to ignore how his heart rate is suddenly through the roof. He smiles weakly at the guy, who is at least not bleeding. _Focus_ , Clint tells himself and gets the hell out of the craziness. Given how big of a mess he is right now, Natasha probably won’t kill him if he complicates her life by injuring a lackey, but she might. And from what he’s seen, Stark’s CEO will definitely give her an alibi if necessary. Clint clears the building without further incident, but then doesn’t even have time to congratulate himself before he realizes he left without a way back in, and there’s no way he’s going to let Natasha deal with the actual event alone. 

“Well, fuck,” Clint sighs, and heads toward the Tower.


	3. Chapter 3

Two hours before the pre-performance reception begins, Natasha leaves her first assistant in command and changes into the low-cut dress and stiletto heels that are Natalie’s answer to formal attire. Pepper has already left for the Tower to do the same, albeit with vastly superior jewelry, and to collect Tony. Natasha has been in contact with JARVIS throughout the day; the word is that Tony will be ready if JARVIS has to cut power to the labs to make it happen. For what it’s worth, Natasha doesn’t think Stark will be deliberately non-cooperative, not tonight, but there’s always the chance of a new and exciting breakthrough in the lab. 

Natalie would probably re-do her make-up completely, but Natasha isn’t in the mood, frankly. She touches up her eyes and adds a little extra lipstick, but that’s all she has patience for. Natalie is a convenience at this point, nothing more. No mission hangs in the balance; no one cares how she dresses or what make-up she does or doesn’t wear. Natasha studies her reflection and counts the hours until she can put Natalie away again: eight seems to be the most realistic. Seven if everything moves exactly on schedule, nine if the performances run long. 

However tired she is--and she had been quite frankly exhausted before she’d spent the night keeping watch over Clint--she reminds herself that In the overall scheme of things nine hours is nothing and goes back out to finish what she’d started.

The afternoon progresses into evening without any major deviations from the schedule. The production team is in place and needs nothing from the Foundation (and thus, nothing from Natalie); the third-party event staff is coordinating with the on-site staff, both for the performances and for the pre- and post-event receptions. So far, there hasn’t been one diva fit thrown. No one is stuck in traffic; every delivery makes it in, if not on time, then close enough that no one has a breakdown that requires Natasha to pretend to care about their feelings while she fixes things for them. Given her current frame of mind, Natasha has decided to be grateful for small mercies.

Right on schedule, her Bluetooth pings with an incoming call from Happy in the Rolls. “Two minute warning,” he says, and Natasha makes her way to the front entrance. The press is there in full force, as is the Stark PR department, so that when Happy pulls up with a flourish, the flashes are blinding. To Natasha’s eye, Tony is somewhat subdued, but that’s speaking as someone who’s seen him truly out of control, so she doesn’t think anyone else notices. Pepper, when Tony hands her out of the back seat, is cool and collected, but when she smiles at Tony, there’s no doubt she means it. With perfect timing, the first bus of kids from the local Boys and Girls Clubs arrives, and Pepper turns to greet them and make sure everyone knows they’re there as her guests. The PR department is nearly swooning with how well it’s playing out; Natasha just checks that off her mental list and goes to make one last fast sweep between the penthouse, the promenade and the atrium.

The receptions are too crowded but no one minds, and the bidding on the silent auction items is fierce and unrelenting. Natasha makes a note to make sure Pepper knows how well the team did on pulling those donations together and then goes to check that the hair, make-up, and wardrobe people (not to mention the security team Harry Winston has sent to watch over the jewelry inventory currently on loan to Pepper) are where they need to be for Pepper's quick-change for the formal introduction to the evening’s performances. On her way back through the promenade, Natasha feels familiar eyes on her and it takes only a second for her conscious brain to catch up with her subconscious and find Clint leaning against a far wall. He smiles when he sees she's noticed him. It’s a real smile, one of the ones that she can’t help returning, and he takes it for the invitation it is, following along behind her, easy, like they’re just out for a walk through Central Park. He’s got her back and the tension bleeds out of her shoulders so quickly she almost drops her tablet.

“So, I got officially blessed,” Clint says when he finally catches up. He waves a badge at her cheerfully. “Stark’s AI said it’d get me everywhere you go.”

“So I see,” Natasha answers. “And you found a suit, as well.” 

“The AI scanned me and this showed up.” Clint makes a little face, as though he can’t decide whether to preen or just give in to his usual aversion to clothing not of the casual variety. It’s a very nice suit: dark gray, beautifully cut, perfect fit. JARVIS, as always, does good work. Natasha finds herself thinking Clint should forget about the idea that he looks stupid in formal attire and just show off a little. It’s a surprising thought--other than to check for injuries, she rarely thinks about his appearance, but now that she’s started, it’s difficult to stop. Or perhaps more accurately: now that she’s _allowed_ herself to think about his appearance, it’s difficult to stop. He shifts uncomfortably under her regard. “Stop,” she says absently, still turning that thought over and looking at it more carefully. “It’s fine. It’s better than anything you’ve ever worn, and you don’t have to pull a bow in it, so stop fidgeting.”

“Yeah, whatever,” Clint grumbles. He straightens his cuffs and rolls his shoulders the way he does when everything’s tightened up. “At least I didn’t have to deal with a tie. That’s okay, right? I mean, I know better than to trust Stark on shit like this, but the AI said it wasn’t strictly black tie tonight--”

“No, it’s not,” Natasha says. “Pepper didn’t want it to be a barrier. Anything’s welcome--the important part is to come out and raise money and celebrate the city.” Natasha has typed or spoken or written that at least a thousand times in the last ten days; it’s a lovely sentiment, but she’ll be very happy to be done with it.

“So, hey, here I am.” Clint strikes a somewhat ridiculous pose, which is marginally better than uncomfortable fidgeting, but doesn’t distract Natasha in the slightest. 

“Celebrating the city.”

“Yeah, so it’s not my scene, but I figured it couldn’t be worse than the ops where we’ve done this--at least nobody’s likely to be shooting at us, right? And somebody needs to be getting you your overpriced water with bubbles.”

“I think I can manage to get my own water,” Natasha says. Clint answers with a rude noise, which is possibly not undeserved, given some of the incidents he’s witnessed over the years. Natasha tries a different approach. “I also have interns--”

“Who you will send off to do more important things.”

“Clint,” Natasha says, repressing a sigh. “Why are you here?”

“If I tell you it’s to have your back, will you not start a fight about how you’re _fine_ right now?” Clint shrugs. “I promise not to get in your way. You can yell at me for implying you can’t take care of yourself when it’s all done. We were gonna talk then anyway, right?” He might be standing in the middle of Lincoln Center, wearing a suit that costs more than his beloved GTO, but he’s still her partner, the one who knows when she wants to cut and run, the same as she does for him. 

“Fine,” Natasha says, motioning for the intern who’s been hovering at the edge of her vision forward. 

“Seriously?” 

“If you’re here, you’re not out trying to kill yourself on the streets,” Natasha answers, and turns to deal with the latest crisis, not bothering to hide her smile at Clint’s snort of laughter behind her. Coulson always says-- _said_ , dammit, she can accept reality--they were perfect in their ability to blackmail each other into functional behavior; Natasha sees no reason why aliens should change that reality.

* * *

Clint keeps his promise and stays out of Natasha’s way. He stays away from Stark and his girlfriend, too, mostly because they’re in the spotlight and Clint’s spent too many years in the shadows to be comfortable anywhere but there. He doesn’t actually hate the whole benefit-gala thing as much as he imagined--it really does help when there’s no one around who might start shooting at him or Nat--but it’s not going to be his first choice in entertainment. He can see where it’s a good thing, though, and not just for the mind-boggling amount of cash that’s being raised. People are proud to be out and showing off their city and how they’re going to rebuild it; Clint’s not going to argue with that. 

As far as he can tell, Natasha is the consigliere to Pott’s godfather--godmother? Clint isn’t sure of the appropriate gender there, but the two of them work pretty well together, and everyone (Clint is including Stark and himself in that tally) is at least a little afraid of interfering with the mind meld going on. Clint makes a point of showing up at regular intervals with bottles of Natasha’s brand of sparkling water. He gets an eye-roll every time, but that’s nothing on the general scale of Natasha-reactions. What he’s most proud of is always having a plate of fresh food while he’s standing around, things that he knows Nat likes, so that when he casually manages to intersect whatever path she’s on, there’s always something for her to steal from him. If he’d actually taken her something to eat, she’d have gotten her back up and there would have been words thrown back and forth, and no eating would have happened. This way, even when she figures it out, and she does, about three-quarters of the way through the pre-performance receptions, she’s already eaten enough that Clint’s inner mother hen is satisfied. 

Once the performances start, Natasha moves backstage and Clint stops pretending like he’s not shadowing her and just stations himself nearby. She does have a fluttering mob of people around her (Clint will admit that’s probably not a fair description--they’re working their asses off and ‘fluttering’ makes them sound useless when it’s just that they’re just all wearing things that move a lot: skirts and scarves and stuff. He can’t help himself.) Fluttering mob aside, Clint still manages to take care of more than a few last-second issues (because there’s always more work than people at this kind of a thing), which he’s fully planning on mentioning when they get to the talking part of the evening and Nat starts gearing up to take him apart for hovering. 

As far as he can tell, everything goes off without a major disaster. He still ends up grinding his teeth with the ballet, but he’s already said his piece to Nat, so he keeps his mouth shut and doesn’t pile anything else on her. To his eyes, she looks a little brittle by the time they’re done, but she’s pulled-together and on top of things to the very end. 

Clint is primed for there to be drama about leaving, but there’s some intense, nonverbal conversation and an unexpected hug between Natasha and Pepper (Stark’s kind of floored by it, too; he throws Clint a look that’s distinctly panicky, like his worldview is crumbling) and then Natasha is turning to Clint and they’re on their way. If the way she’s leading Clint on some complicated path through the halls and stairwells of the non-public areas of the building is anything to judge by, she has some place for them to be. Clint doesn’t actually care where they’re going, so long as she’s not ditching him, so he keeps his mouth shut and follows along. 

He’s expecting a storage closet--or at best, a dusty and abandoned office--but when she finally pulls him through the last door, they’re in an oddly-shaped, unfinished crawlspace where the exposed subfloor doesn’t matter because one wall is actually a window looking out over the Lincoln Center campus. Clint goes straight across to it, automatically sighting along the buildings to orient himself. Natasha is watching him when he turns back, an uncharacteristically unguarded look on her face. If he didn’t know better, he’d say she looked uncertain. 

“Wait,” Clint says, noticing the cooler and the space blankets folded on top of it. Behind it is a small duffel, like they use for their go-bags. “Did you actually send one of your interns up here to set all this up?”

“Please,” Natasha says, one hand on the studded wall for balance while she unbuckles the ankle strap on her ungodly-high sandals.”That would be completely inappropriate.” She kicks the shoe off with more of a snap than is strictly necessary and switches hands to get to the other foot. “I did it myself. After we talked.”

“Because doing this at your place wasn’t an option?” Clint shrugs out of his suit jacket and starts in on his cufflinks. They look like they’re here to stay, and getting out of the monkey suit is never a bad idea.

“We have a certain routine there,” Natasha answers. She turns around and pulls her hair out of the way so Clint can undo the hook and eye at the top of her dress. He almost can’t see it in the low light that spills in from outside; it takes him longer than it usually does, but Natasha waits patiently. “I thought we might get farther if we broke those patterns.”

Clint drags his attention away from where she’s simultaneously pulling on an oversized mens dress shirt and shimmying out of her dress. She might be onto something with the patterns thing, because they’ve been living on top of each other for weeks, in and out of showers and sleeping in the same bed, all without Clint’s brain going off on wild tangents about seeing a little skin like it is now. 

“So long as there’s food--”

“Please,” Natasha says. “Would I try to do anything with you without food?” 

“Come on, remember that time up in Reykjavik?” He’s trying too hard to make things normal, but she’s letting him, so maybe it’s not the wrong thing to do after all. 

“You were as sick as a dog,” she says, pushing the cooler in his direction and waiting while he investigates the contents. “It still is not my fault you couldn’t be in the same room as anything resembling food without projectile vomiting.”

“Good times,” Clint says, and he’s only half-joking. It’s not a memory most people would enjoy claiming, but it’s _theirs_ and that makes all the difference. “But, okay, there’s food, and a view--” he waves one arm toward the windows. “We’re all set. Feel free to yell at me about how you can take care of yourself.”

“Yes,” Natasha says quietly. “We’re set.” She shakes out a space blanket and sits down on it, tucking her legs up under her. Clint settles next to her and she adds, “No yelling.” 

“Okay,” Clint says slowly. “I guess we can do that--or not do that, as the case may be.” He watches her for a few seconds but can’t figure anything out. “What’re we doing then?”

“I don’t know,” Natasha answers with a disbelieving laugh that half-kills Clint to hear. Nat has a plan, always. It doesn’t matter what hell is raining down on them, she’s always thinking three steps ahead of where they are. He reaches over and takes her hand. 

“Not that I’m ducking out on my part in this, but what was that downstairs? Natalie isn’t someone I expected to see again.”

“She was easy,” Natasha says. “You were off doing your daily penance and I...” She stops and considers her words. “Pepper and I stayed in touch--I don’t know if you knew that. After the whole Expo disaster, after Culver and Harlem, she didn’t just write me off and pretend I’d never existed. The Stark Foundation was taking the lead on this benefit and…” 

Her voice trails off; Clint keeps himself quiet and still until she comes back with him. “You’re not the only one who needed to do something,” she says with a half-shrug. “This--it seemed like a good fit, and Natalie was the easiest way in. All her clothes and things were in storage; she had a personnel file at SI; I just stepped right back in. The ballet was just an unfortunate coincidence."

Clint snorts, because that's one way of putting it, but she looks at him steadily.  
"My sitting through _Coppelia_ isn't any worse than you walking through the torn-up parts of the city."

"Sure it is," Clint says. There's more of an edge in his voice than he wants to put out there, but he can't dial it down any more than he has already. "You didn't have anything to do with setting it all in motion--"

"Stop," Natasha snaps. "Just, _stop_ it."

"Look," Clint sighs. "I get it, I do. It wasn't me exactly, but it wasn't not me either. That was my brain, my planning, my bow, and whatever I held back or diverted, it wasn't enough. So, yeah, sorry, but it's not the same."

"If you can accept that it wasn't entirely you--" She waits until he shrugs, "--then you can acknowledge that if I'd talked Banner down on the 'carrier, we would have been in a far better position to deal with your attack. If Stark and Rogers hadn’t been at each other throats, we might have even been ahead of you." She shifts around so she can wrap her arms around her knees and lay her forehead on them. "We did what we could, all of us, and if we wish it could have been more, it's not something we can change."

"Yeah," Clint says, more because he knows how much she hates it when things spiral so far out of control she can't bring them back and less because he agrees that she has anything to blame herself for. "Okay." It takes him three tries, but he reaches out and lays one hand on the back of her neck. She breathes out at the first brush of his fingers and relaxes under his hand, which makes him stand down a little, too, at least enough to say, "That's pretty fatalistic of you--you better watch out, somebody might forget you only used to be Russian."

"Fuck off, Barton." Her words are muffled because she still hasn't picked up her head, but he can hear the smile in her voice even before she turns her head and glares her I'm-really-cracking-up-on-the-inside glare at him, and _god_ , he is so fucking lucky to have her on his team, in his life. 

“I know this is where I’m supposed to make some wisecrack back at you,” Clint tells her, “but… no fucking off is happening. I think you’re stuck with me.” He shrugs self-consciously, but she doesn’t roll her eyes at him or shrug his hand off, so he goes on, “And I guess the bigger question is where do you want to be stuck with me, because I don’t think it’s here.”

“No,” Natasha agrees quietly. “I don’t think this city is good for either of us right now, but it’s not only my decision to make.” 

That’s Clint’s cue; luckily, he actually has an answer, or at least he thinks he does. 

“Pepper said something, when she was up there thanking everyone; she said it was just the beginning, but that we were in it for the long haul,” Clint says, trying to find the right words. “And that--it’s the truth. If we go away now, there’s going to be stuff waiting for us when we get back.” He doesn’t say the part about _and by ‘we,’ I mean ‘me’_ , but he’s thinking it and he’s pretty sure Natasha knows it. She lets it slide, though, which is probably another sign of how much she needs to be gone and how much he’s missed. He reaches for a casual tone and doesn’t think he does too badly. “So. I’m thinking road trip. My car or yours?”

Natasha gives him that look that says her BS meter is on high alert, but he must pass because she only says, “I don’t know--are you going to whine about how boring mine is and go on and on about yours being a classic?”

“Hey, my baby _is_ a classic,” Clint says. “And she’s all tuned up and ready to go.”

“Did you get the air conditioning fixed?” She sounds completely unimpressed about the rest of it, but Clint knows she’ll change her tune when he lets her get behind the wheel. 

* * *

Natasha surprises herself and falls asleep in the passenger seat of Clint’s ‘baby’. She does actually like the car, if only because she’s watched Clint re-build it over the years, piece by piece. It’s been around as long as she has, but has only been drivable for the last few years, and she knows she was the first person to actually ride in it once Clint got it to the point where it was roadworthy. (Street legal is an entirely different story, but the SHIELD IDs have been discreetly flashed over the years when certain street-racing task forces have eyed the engine block a bit too closely.) 

All affectionate feelings aside, a re-built GTO with a suspension intended for street racing is not the most comfortable of rides, but Natasha doesn’t remember anything much past the Lincoln Tunnel. The sun is rising and she doesn’t care where they’re going, only that they’re going; and the nap she gets is better sleep than she’s had since she’d left for Russia to infiltrate Luchkov’s operation. 

She doesn’t wake until Clint’s pulling into a service plaza somewhere in Pennsylvania, and good sleep or not, her mouth is still cotton-dry, and she’s got a stiff neck from the weird bucket seats in the car. She can cope with all that, though, especially since Clint has, predictably enough, found the one monopolistically-controlled stop that has decent, non-chain coffee. He’ll drink the vilest sludge, if necessary, but he’s so much less of a jerk with good coffee that it had taken Natasha almost a year to believe he wasn’t just playing mind games with her when they first partnered up. 

She goes and deals with the caffeine situation while he frets about the octane levels not being perfect for however he’s got the car tuned this month. He’s still glowering at the gas pumps when she gets back. 

“They’re inanimate,” Natasha says, handing over his so-macho black, no-sugar and leaning against the fender. “That means they’re not intimidated by your thousand yard stare.” That at least means he transfers said stare to her. She smiles at him. “I’m not intimidated by it either.”

He grunts what she assumes is an insult but might be agreement because he finally starts to fill the gas tank. She wanders over to the small, grassy area where people are sitting at picnic tables and walking their dogs, all very normal and ordinary. Out here, away from Manhattan, it’s almost impossible to believe that aliens came pouring through a rift in the space-time continuum not even three weeks ago. She’s become accustomed to impossible things, can even accept that she’s one herself, but the Chitauri might take a bit longer to process than she’d originally thought. 

“Nat,” Clint yells from where he’s already back in the car, the driver’s side window rolled down enough that she can hear him searching through the satellite radio, looking for the perfect station, one that will no doubt drive her insane. She rolls her eyes at him even if he is too far away to see it, and starts back. “Yo, let’s go.”

“Classy, Barton,” Natasha says as she slams the car door and reaches for her seat belt. He smirks at her and pulls back out onto the turnpike. She watches him drive for a while. “Are we actually going somewhere?”

“Yeah, about that,” Clint says, and Natasha arches an eyebrow at him. “I was thinking Route 66, you know? Classic American road trip--what? Don’t look at me in that tone of voice, you know you like it when you don’t have to deal with the rich snobs.” 

“I was questioning your map-reading skills,” Natasha says. “We’re in Pennsylvania and the last time I looked, Route 66 started in Chicago.”

“So we roadtrip to the road trip.” Clint brushes aside multiple states with a shrug. “It’s summer, no big deal if we take a couple of days more or less.” 

“From that, I’m taking it that there isn’t much of a schedule to all of this,” Natasha says, mostly to watch him sigh in exasperation. Simple pleasures shouldn’t be missed.

“Road trip, woman. By definition, there is no schedule.”

“The journey is the destination?”

“Translated from the Zen, yeah.” He slants her a quick look. “That okay with you?”

“For now,” Natasha answers and smiles a very satisfied smile when he flips her off. Surprisingly enough, he’s settled on music that is low and bluesy, not aggravating at all, and she falls asleep again.


	4. Chapter 4

They make it almost to Indiana before Natasha insists they stop for the day. Between the terrible state of the turnpike in Pennsylvania, Clint’s bitching about the same the whole way through the state and into Ohio, and Natasha’s back and neck revolting against being slammed around, she is done with the charms of the open road. Clint doesn’t agree, but indicates his displeasure by checking them into a completely ridiculous bed and breakfast, one of the ones with antiques and ruffles and pillows and hearts adorning every surface, one of the ones that make her grind her teeth at the appalling kitsch. 

Fortunately, under all the fripperies, the mattress is excellent.

“I may let you live after all,” Natasha groans as she flops back. She should get up and stretch--it will help with all the tension she’s been carrying--but before she can make herself move, Clint’s nudging her to roll over and pushing her hair to one side so he can get at the knots in her neck. 

"You’re definitely getting soft on me, Romanoff." Clint digs his fingers in hard--perfect, really. Natasha murmurs a wordless sound of satisfaction; Clint laughs softly and keeps finding knots. "Seventeen hours of sitting, driving on a _road_ even. That didn't use to do you in."

"Aliens didn't use to fall from the sky either," Natasha says. "Not to mention the seventeen hours in the car came on top of a twenty hour day and no actual sleep." She deliberates for a few moments, but it seems ridiculous to sidestep the issue, so she adds, "Or the two weeks before it, waiting to see if you were going to keep going down that rabbit hole you found for yourself."

Clint's hands still on her shoulders and she rolls back over to face him.

"Sorry," he says. "I didn't mean to be a dick about it all."

"It was my choice to stay," Natasha tells him. "It wasn't even a choice, really. It--” It’s long past time for her to say this; it’s still surprisingly difficult, though. “I wasn't going to lose you." She reaches up and traces her thumb along his cheekbone, cups his jaw in her hand. He goes still, so still against her, barely breathing. She knows he understands, because they’ve always understood each other, right from the first, when he hadn’t killed her and she hadn’t run. He understands, but she doesn’t know if he will let himself accept it. "I wasn't."

"Nat--"

“Shh.” Natasha touches the tips of two fingers to his mouth. She can say this over his objections if she has to, but things turn messy when they argue and she wants to know how this will happen without that baggage dragging them down. "I’m still not going to." 

For all that she knows he can slow his heart and settle his breathing, she can see the pulse beating hard under his jaw, and his breath is ragged and uneven against her fingertips. Finally, he says, “I knew--know--exactly how I would have killed you.”

It’s not an objection or an argument, just a statement of their reality. Natasha doesn’t mind that--she is nothing if not realistic--but she hasn’t heard that defeated tone from him since the first night. That had been about her, killing her, too, and she likes it even less now than she did then. 

“I know how I’d kill you, too,” Natasha offers her own reality, as gently as she knows how. She leans up on one elbow--slow, careful movements so that he can stop her if he wants to--and touches her mouth to his. He doesn’t stop her. “It is what it is,” she says, her voice suddenly nothing but a hoarse whisper. 

“Nat--” Whatever else he’s going to say is lost when he leans in, wordlessly inviting Natasha to kiss him again, and she complies, less gently this time. She fully intends to let him finish his thought, but then he opens his mouth against hers, drawing her in deeper, intensifying the kiss as his hand comes up to hold her head steady. He groans, low and helpless and wanting, and she allows herself to be lost in the sudden rush of having him. 

He kisses her like he guards her back; focused and intent, just enough of that edge, the one that’s always intrigued her, the one that’s always kept him from being just another jarhead with a gun and shit hot aim. He moves with her, letting her roll them, and it’s her turn to make noise as he slides his hands up under her shirt in a long, careful sweep up and down her back, so similar to how he’d just been touching her and yet nothing like it all. 

“Nat,” Clint murmurs again, this iteration a question and his answer all at once, one that Natasha can finally see she’s been moving toward for as long as she’s known him. He lets her see so much of himself, more than he ever shows to anyone, hope and fear and anger and love, and she can’t find words in any language to say how right it feels to be able to accept it all. 

“Clint,” she breathes in answer, and this time their mouths crash together without any pretense of gentleness. He rocks up into her, and she grinds down into him, and as much as she wants this, she doesn’t want it to end so quickly.

“Wait,” she manages to choke out and makes herself move away from him long enough to pull her shirt over her head and off. She means to lie back down as soon as she’s done, but he leans up on one elbow and trails the back of his other hand down the base of her throat, and she freezes. Clint keeps his head down and watches his hand as he traces the lace of her bra, a light, careful touch that arcs over and back and leaves her breathless for all that he’s barely touching her.

“Let me…?” he whispers, edging just the tips of his fingers inside the cup, his calluses catching against her skin, and she answers wordlessly, reaching behind her back to undo the clasp and letting the straps slide down her arms. He glances up at her then, and she can’t help leaning forward to kiss him again, just the merest brush of her mouth against his. It’s still enough to leave them both gasping, but then he urges her back. “Let me,” he says again, and she does, sits still, straddling his lap and lets him see her and touch her, her arms and her back and her breasts. He traces long, sweeping patterns on her skin, lines that curve along the side of her breasts, circles that spiral up from her navel to tease at the undersides. 

Her nipples are hard and aching long before he so much as brushes his thumbs across them; she’s half-bitten through her bottom lip to keep from begging for it. He’d give her anything, let her take anything, she knows that, but what she wants is what he’s giving her. He works her deliberately, first the almost-not-there touches that make her arch and pant, then the careful pressure as he shapes his fingers to her and rolls each nipple slowly. Natasha drops her head back, and she fights for breath, but then he’s pinching her, nothing careful or gentle, but sharp and harsh and fucking _perfect_ and the rest of the world, everything that isn’t his hands on her, falls away.

Clint whispers to her--she hears him over the blood pounding in her ears and her own harsh, rasping breaths-- _beautiful_ and _gorgeous_ and _come on, come on_ , and when she forces her eyes open, he’s watching her, his eyes dark with want and need and hunger. 

Natasha knows that look, recognizes the laser-sharp focus and intensity and welcomes it. She smiles at him and reaches out to touch him, his mouth, the short hair at his temples. It’s good, touching him and _seeing_ him, but for Natasha it’s not enough. 

“More,” Natasha says, her voice rough and hoarse. “ _Everything_.” Clint shudders, a slow, helpless wave, and then eases back deliberately, wordlessly giving her what she wants, open in a way that stretches Natasha’s control to the limit. She strips him out of his shirt quickly, but then takes her time as she licks her way down his body, collar bones to biceps to where the skin is thinnest on the inside of his wrists. She starts again with the pulse under his jaw and drinks him in as he shakes against her. She has to move off him to get out of her jeans, but then she gets the pleasure of crawling back up over him once he’s taken care of his own cargos. 

She indulges herself in the play of skin and muscle under her hands and mouth until she’s back in his lap, his mouth on hers, his arms around her, his cock pressing hot and hard against her. After all the years they’ve known each other, all the adrenaline and blood, all the mornings they’ve survived to see against seemingly insurmountable odds, all the paperwork and rivalry and sparring, it turns out to be simple to ease forward and let him slide up into her, to wrap her arms around him, and her legs, to hold him close and feel him around her and against her and in her. 

“Nat, _fuck_ ,” Clint says, a long, quiet exhale that settles over her, light and warm. He holds her face in both hands and kisses her with slow, deliberate intent. He fucks her the same way, tiny shifts of his hips pressing his cock up into her while he maps her face and jaw and neck with his mouth. Natasha moves with him, taking him deep and then letting him go, again and again, until she’s all but lost in the growing pleasure. 

His breath is coming in gasps so deep they might be sobs, but his hands slide down to hold her hips, his fingers biting into her skin and keeping her to the same slow rhythm. Natasha doesn’t fight him, just lets herself be swept along, each touch building on the one before it. She watches as he fights for control, indulges herself in that strength until there’s no possibility of holding back everything that’s crashing through her, no reason not to bring him with her, no need to stand alone next to each other.

It’s been longer than she cares to remember since she’s felt anything with so much pleasure and intensity and rightness. She can’t help smiling at him, part satisfaction and part disbelief. One side of his mouth quirks up in that smile that means he’s right there with her, and she just manages to drop a kiss on it before it fades and they’re left with the rest of this reality. Clint presses a kiss to her forehead as he shifts her off his lap and disappears into the en-suite bathroom.

Natasha reaches for her composure, quickly stitching it together so that she’s found at least a tiny bit of calm by the time he reappears. He settles himself on the bed, close enough to her that she can feel the warmth of his body even if they’re not touching, and carefully, silently, draws a warm washcloth over skin. He tosses it toward the bathroom door when he’s finished, but otherwise doesn’t move. 

“We don’t have to do this,” Natasha says finally, interpreting the too-serious look in his eyes and not allowing herself to pretend otherwise. “If you don’t want--”

“You know I do,” Clint says, lying down next to her. Natasha doesn’t hide her relief from him, just curls on her side to face him. “You know I always have.” 

“But…?” Natasha prompts, because there’s more, that much is painfully obvious.

“There’s--I need you to know something. Someone I need you to meet, before this is more,” Clint says. “I don’t want to just drag you along, but I-- It’s important.” He reaches out, slowly, as though he’s not quite sure what he’s doing or if it might be allowed, and brushes the hair back off her face. “We’re--it’s not too far. Maybe a day driving; and I need to get it over with fast.” 

“That’s encouraging,” Natasha murmurs, but then when he shrugs and looks down, she adds, “Of course. Whatever you need.” 

She waits for more of an explanation--not because she needs one, but because she thinks he has one that he can’t verbalize yet, and knowing their histories, it’s not unlikely that one of the myriad lurking disasters is involved. She likes to be prepared, if at all possible, which Clint knows, but he’s quiet. He doesn’t sound quite like himself, but he’s not off by so much that Natasha feels she needs to remark upon it, so she stays curled on her side and lets him stroke her hair until they both fall asleep. 

* * *

It’s only a little awkward in the morning, which lightens something inside Natasha she hadn’t really been aware of carrying. It probably helps that they’ve woken up naked together before--there’s no time for modesty when it’s 20 degrees below zero, every stitch of clothing is soaking wet, and there’s only one sleeping bag to get through the night--and have even spent a month living as two-thirds of a group marriage while Natasha worked her way inside a drug cartel. This is not bad, she thinks while she’s in the shower and incredibly aware of Clint in the other room. Judging from the studied nonchalance in letting her have the first shower, he’s just as aware of her, too, as though they’re both acknowledging what happened, what _is_ happening, and recognizing that things are changing. 

Many things are still the same, though, including Clint’s lack of enthusiasm about mornings in general. It’s soothing to hear the same out-of-sorts grumbling that she’s dealt with for years now. He’s somewhat better tempered once she tells him that there is coffee waiting in the common room even after she reminds him he’ll have to drink it in he company of the other guests. 

“That’ll teach me to be a bitch about stopping for the day,” he says with the trademark deadpan, the one that’s accompanied by the creases deepening at the corners of his eyes, a tell that she’d noticed right from the first time they’d spoken. Then, she’d thought it was mocking her; now she knows it’s directed at himself. She doesn’t like it either way, but there’s not much she can do about it. 

Fortunately, the coffee is on equal ground with the mattress and the owner has a basket of muffins--her speciality, she announces in a bright voice that threatens to put a spike through Natasha’s brain--so that they can make their excuses and take breakfast to go. 

“Okay,” Clint says as he pulls back out onto the highway. “So that was my yearly quota of people who want to make my stay with them special.”

“I could have lived without the ruffles,” Natasha says. “The muffins are good, though.” She breaks them into pieces and shares them with him, and the last of the awkwardness between them fades. 

* * *

They get off the interstate and drive west and then south through Indiana, Clint checking the GPS frequently and taking ever-smaller roads. They stop once for food that Clint pushes around on his plate and doesn’t eat. When the waitress checks to make sure everything’s edible, he just tips her outrageously and she packs his meatloaf to go. 

“Don’t want to waste it, sugar,” she says to Natasha. “Some days it won’t be there even though you need it.” 

Natasha thanks her and takes the styrofoam box out to the car. She’s not trying to passive-aggressively comment on the fact that he’s not eating--she’s more than capable of pushing him about it outright--but she’s not going to let him off the hook about it either. She waits for him to throw it out of the window (or at her, which will at least not let him hide behind his silence) but he only takes the box and then fiddles with the GPS.

“Near as I can tell, we’ve got a couple more hours. It’s not all that far, just...” Clint nods at the road in front of them. It’s a state route, but it’s been nothing but two lanes for the last hour, and it doubles as Main Street every time they hit a town. “Slow going.”

“We’re not on a schedule,” Natasha reminds him. “We can stop right now and take in the sights.”

Clint is quiet for a while, navigating the crosswalks and cars trying to parallel park with a deliberate attention; Natasha watches small-town life play out from behind her sunglasses. She knows when he’s looking for the right words, and unlike some, it doesn’t bother her to wait it out. 

“Yeah,” Clint finally sighs. “We could, but it’s not going to go away.” He glances over at her and shrugs. “Might as well get it out of my head.”

“I don’t think it’ll be a surprise if I tell you I want it out of your head, too,” Natasha tells him. “You’re starting to make me want to recalibrate you again.”

“Aw, Tash, you say the sweetest things.” Clint reaches across the seat and takes her hand in his and it is _ridiculous_ how much she likes it. 

“You could just tell me what’s going on,” Natasha says, threading her fingers through his. “Drop the mystery and, I don’t know, talk it out?”

“I don’t think so,” Clint says. They pass the town limit, and he picks up speed but doesn’t let go of her hand. “Trust me?”

“I haven’t strangled you yet,” Natasha answers and pointedly does not smile at his bark of laughter, but she’s pleased he can still laugh about whatever it is that’s bothering him, and she knows he knows it.

* * *

Six hours later (including another stop for food, only this time Natasha stares at him until he actually eats his cheeseburger and then bites her tongue and doesn’t ask when he buys an entire pie and has them box it to take with him), Natasha isn’t all that surprised to see them coming up to a parking lot and open field that are currently covered with rides and tents and midway games. People are moving about purposefully--opening booths and testing rides, carrying costumes and tools and supplies from the living areas up to the public spaces. In the low, slanting light of a summer evening, everything looks simple and small, but Natasha knows how the dark of the night makes everything that much more exciting and expansive. 

Clint’s mouth is tight, and his hands hold the steering wheel so hard his knuckles are white, but he circles them around the tents and back to the trailers and trucks that form what Natasha assumes is the center of the traveling community. His GTO stands out less than she would have thought, especially with the dirt and grime of four states on it. Clint navigates the hashed-together ‘streets’ with the air of familiarity, slanting a glance at her and saying, “You set up the same no matter where you are.”

“Makes sense.” Natasha nods and makes mental note of the quickest way back out. She doesn’t think they’re here to start trouble, but it never hurts to have an escape route in mind, especially given Clint’s history. She knows the worst of the trouble is gone--she helped him put an end to it--but people’s memories are unpredictable. 

“Okay,” Clint finally says, slowing to a stop and turning the engine off behind an older, well-worn trailer. “We’re here.” 

He makes no move to get out, though. Natasha waits him out again.The noise from the carnival gearing itself up to open is surprisingly muted.

“Thanks,” he says after a minute or two. “For putting up with me.”

“Well,” Natasha says, eyeing the dirt churned to mud outside the car. “You do take me to interesting places. I always appreciate that.”

Clint’s laugh is a little ragged, but it’s real. He gets out of the car and waits for her to join him, reaching out to guide her around to the front of the trailer with a hand low on her back. Natasha settles minutely into the weight of his hand, just enough to let him know she likes it there, and doesn’t even pretend not to be pleased by how he relaxes into her as they reach the steps up to the trailer.

The door is propped open--to catch the breeze, Natasha supposes--and what she can see of the inside is worn and old, but the wood of the panelling glows with polish and the fabric that covers the windows and furniture is still jewel-toned and rich. Given the dust generated by a hundred people living on an open field, Natasha can imagine everything must be washed daily, if not more often. It reminds Natasha of an old dacha, faded and threadbare, but still vital and alive. Clint glances at her once as they step up to the door; whatever he’s looking for, he must see it because he turns back to the door with a smile creasing the corners of his eyes.

“Hey,” Clint says, drawing the word out low and lilting, almost singing it in a way Natasha’s never heard from him before. “Mama Tu.”  
.  
There’s only one person in the room: a woman old enough that Natasha can’t quite guess her age. She’s dressed in the same manner as her home: the cloth of her dress is faded, but the dress itself is regal, and her hair, though white with age, is pinned up in intricate braids. At Clint’s words, she looks up and cocks her head, and a smile edges over her face. “Well, now,” she says, standing tall and proud and walking across the room to let them in, graceful despite the two canes she uses with each step. “ _Ma faucon_ , still here with us.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Clint says with an ease that Natasha has seen only seldomly from him. “Still here.”

“It’s been a long time since you came to see Mama.” Her eyes move swiftly over Natasha, taking her measure and not being coy about it. She nods once to Clint, who ushers Natasha inside. Mama Tu looks Clint over much more carefully, her eyes lingering at spots Natasha knows took the hits during Manhattan even if the bruises and scabbed-over cuts have faded by now. “And even longer since you have brought someone to me.”

Clint tenses at that, but then Natasha feels him make himself relax. “It has been,” he says evenly. He steps forward and takes both her hands in his and leans down to kiss her quickly on both cheeks. She accepts the kisses with a smile that he echoes a little ruefully before he turns to Natasha. “This is my partner.” 

“Ah,” Mama Tu says, nodding with satisfaction. “ _Le jugement_.” 

“Ma’am,” Natasha says politely, well aware that she’s being weighed and measured and that the other woman already knows something of her. She’s not entirely sure she likes the arcana to which she’s apparently been assigned, but that comes more from disliking any sort of pre-determined label than the label itself. There certainly are worse associations within the tarot than to be tied to rebirth and reconciliation.

“What did you bring me, little hawk?” Mama Tu nods to the box Clint’s still carrying. “Ah,” she says when he hands it over. “You remember our secret.” She hands the box back to Clint and nods to the small kitchen area. “I have not changed anything.”

Clint smiles and starts making tea with the ease of someone who’s completed the task a hundred times. Natasha takes the seat across from Mama Tu and studies the older woman as intently as she is being studied herself. Clint has history with her and seems to trust her, but Natasha likes to make her own assessments. 

“I am Martine Toussaint and you.., You are his partner, but how should I name you?” Mama Tu asks. She nods toward Clint. “He keeps his own counsel, that one, and shares only what is necessary.”

Natasha considers the question for a few seconds before answering, “Natalia Alianovna.” 

Mama Tu nods once, gravely, as if she knows how rarely Natasha offers that name. Clint is watching them with the look that says he’s not entirely sure he heard things right. Natasha shrugs minutely at him; she answers to many names, and this is the one that fits best now. 

The trailer falls silent, but it’s not a strained silence. Mama Tu sits and smiles at Clint moving around in her kitchen; Natasha finds herself suddenly certain that this is where Clint learned to cook, a tiny bit of history that slots into place with a satisfying weight. Clint brings heavy mugs and a brightly painted teapot over, and Mama Tu pours for them. As black and bitter as Clint drinks his coffee, he loads his tea with alarming amounts of milk and sugar. Mama Tu smiles, while Natasha represses a shudder at the sight. Clint smirks at her, because he knows how she feels about smothering the more delicate nuances of the tea leaves, and the quiet extends for a few more moments. 

“And what of your Mr. Phillip?” Mama Tu asks, not unkindly, as though she already knows or senses what’s to come.

“He’s… “

“Gone,” Natasha supplies when Clint hesitates.

“I had thought as much,” Mama Tu answers. “We will remember him to the morning sun.”

Clint nods, his eyes on the floor. Natasha breathes through yet another moment of loss. When she was younger, she’d imagined there would be a time when losing someone wouldn’t feel as though she’d had another piece of her own self torn away; she thinks that still might be true, but it wouldn’t be the blessing she’d imagined it might be. Clint looks up finally; she sees the same thing in his eyes. She might have come in with him because she was tired enough to not care, but she became his partner because he knew loss the same way she did.

“I brought Nat here so you could meet her, so you’d know her if-- well, you know.” Clint turns to Mama Tu and takes her hand. “She’ll make sure everything’s okay if I can’t.”

Natasha eyes him thoughtfully, even as she smiles and nods in agreement. What he’s saying is true--she is listed as trustee on most of Clint’s accounts, sole trustee now that Coulson is dead--but there’s more to this visit than that. Clint lifts one shoulder a fraction of an inch in a shrug that asks her to just go with it, so she does, but she knows he’s not stupid enough to think she’ll let this pass.

* * *

The night is full and deep when they leave Mama Tu’s trailer and make their way back to the car. Clint puts the car in gear and drives off without saying anything. Natasha studies his face under the harsh, uneven lights of the carnival and decides she’ll honor that silence, at least for a while. 

The carnival and the town it had set up in are far in the distance when Clint pulls over on the side of the road. He still doesn’t face her or start any kind of communication, so Natasha starts for him. “Did I pass?”

“What? No, I didn’t take you there for anything like tha--”

“Well, you didn’t take me there for the reason you were offering up for public consumption, either, so maybe you could fill me in now,” Natasha says. 

“Yeah,” Clint says, taking a deep breath. “So. This was-- We lived with her, I mean, she kind of looked out for us, Barney and me, when we first got there. Until Trick decided I was good enough and Barney went off on his own. She does that with a lot of the kids--keeps an eye on them when their parents aren’t around or aren’t--functional.”

“I can see that,” Natasha says. She knows him well enough to know this really is his truth and even if she still isn’t quite sure of his reasoning, she keeps her voice as neutral as possible.

“The thing is,” Clint says. “This, Mama Tu--it’s as good as it got. My life, I mean. Bunking down in her trailer, helping take care of the little kids--that was the best thing that ever happened to me, ever, and it lasted less than a year.” He looks straight at her, no ducking eye contact, no making it easy on himself. “And everybody says they get it, they get where I come from. They tell me that it’s all on me that I got out and got to where I am now, and yeah, maybe, but sooner or later, something’ll happen and-- I forget all that and end up back at that dumb kid sleeping on the floor of the fortune teller’s trailer and knowing he was one shaky day away from not even having that.”

“Clint--”

“I needed you to see--to _know_ , okay? So you’d understand for sure what you’re getting yourself into and--you know, if you don’t want to take that on, let’s don’t go there now, because no shit, Nat, I need you with me. I can’t--Coulson’s gone, and Bobbie… There’s nobody else. So, yeah, I want you, I’ve _always_ wanted you, but if the choice is having you until I fuck it all up and don’t have you at all, then I need my partner more.”

The low lights from the dashboard throws his face into shadowed relief, but Natasha knows it almost as well as she knows her own. She wants to touch him, to trace along the line of his jaw and down to his shoulders, but touch will only distract now so she curls her fingers into her palms and makes them stay in her lap. 

“When you came to me last year, and asked me to be a trustee, do you know what that meant to me?” Natasha asks. 

“I was pushing my way into your life?”

Natasha resists the urge to slap him and instead snaps, “It meant that you trusted me. Finally.”

“Nat, come on--I’ve trusted you since, since before Budapest, you know that.”

“You trusted me with _you_ , your safety, your life, yes,” Natasha says. “But I don’t think it’s a surprise that you put less value on that than on someone who you’ve taken under your protection.”

Clint doesn’t say anything, only holds onto the steering wheel and stares out into the night. 

“You know I can’t tell you we won’t screw this up,” Natasha says. “No one knows that for sure. But you never won’t have me at all.”

Clint looks at her for long, long seconds before he drops his head down on the steering wheel and lets the air bleed out of his lungs.

Natasha wants to be furious that he has so little faith in them, but she’s been there, standing by and watching as his life outside of Hawkeye has imploded and the only thing left to do is to take him out where he can rain destruction down on targets worthy of his focus and talent and then do it again and again while he stitches himself back together. She will not let anything between them end that way; he knows that, she knows he does, but who is she to take offense at trust issues?

“Let me drive,” Natasha says. She expects a fight--she’ll win, of course--but instead Clint just nods and opens the door to come around to the passenger side. Natasha climbs over behind the steering wheel and adjusts the mirrors before studying the GPS.

“You don’t--It doesn’t matter where we go,” Clint says. “It was just a thought, doing what’s left of 66.”

“It’s a classic,” Natasha says. “It matches the car.” She means to say it lightly, but she is suddenly tired of them pretending as though the things they want don’t matter after all. If Clint hears that in her voice, he doesn’t say anything, and if he doesn’t, he’ll figure it out soon enough. She keeps the radio off and drives in silence, letting herself fall under the spell of the road unreeling in front of the headlights. Clint is still and quiet next to her, but she knows he’s not asleep

“Why now?” Clint asks into the darkness. “It’s been years, and… Now?”

“Monsters and magic,” Natasha answers. She’d wondered if she could articulate the rightness and fit of reaching for him; she's happy that she can find the words easily now that he’s asked. “Aliens, demi-gods…. If you survive them--” She has to stop for a moment, for everyone who didn’t, for Coulson and the end of the team that had stood behind her as she found herself, but her voice stays strong and true when she continues, “They strip away all the inconsequentials and make it easy to see what’s in front of you.” 

“I’ve always been right in front of you, Nat.” 

“I always saw you,” Natasha answers. She drives in silence for a while, the inky darkness of the two-lane state route they’re on giving way to the building and street lights of yet another small town, the darkness coming back again on the other side, before she adds, “I just… finally saw _us_.”


	5. Chapter 5

Clint watches Natasha’s profile in the low lights from the dashboard. The miles go by, and he wants to tell her he’s a fucked-up mess right now, that she should be running for the hills. If there’s one thing he knows, though, it’s that Natasha Romanoff doesn’t pretend things aren’t what they are. If anyone understands how much Loki screwed him over, Nat does. 

“You’re staring at me, Barton.” Natasha doesn’t take her eyes off the road but Clint knows she’s got him covered with her peripheral vision. 

“Yeah,” Clint answers.

“And?”

“You’re gorgeous.” Clint shrugs when she shoots him a sharp look; he’s never claimed to be all that deep. They’re coming up on another small town; when Natasha slows and stops for the single stop-light, he holds out his hand and smiles when she reaches for it. That’s how it is between them: one sharp look, followed by a hand out of whatever pit they might have fallen into at the time. “I want this--” Clint brushes a kiss across her knuckles--” _you_ , so bad I don’t trust any reason I can come up with that says it’s okay to go for it, even before I start trying to figure out how much of me is left after Loki, but...”

“But what?”

“But… I figure you know me, for real, and it wouldn’t be the first time I jumped in blind when you told me it was okay.”

Natasha’s hand tightens on his, and her voice isn’t quite even when she says, “Given your talent for ridiculous situations, it probably won’t be the last time either.” 

“No.” Clint laughs--from relief, from gratitude, from the sheer fucking amazement that he maybe hasn’t fucked things up already. “It probably won’t.” He drops another kiss on her hand.

“Find us someplace to stop for the night,” Natasha says, and he obediently pulls out his phone with the hand not holding hers.

“Ruffles or not?” he asks, just because he can’t not run his mouth.

“Clint.” Natasha tugs her hand free and, without taking her eyes off the road, traces her thumb over his lower lip. Clint’s mouth goes dry. “I don’t _care_. Do you?”

Clint catches her hand and holds it steady so he can bite quick and sharp at the pad of her thumb, and he will take the sudden break in her breathing to his fucking grave. “What do you think?”

“Find us someplace,” Natasha grits out in a tone that Clint isn’t sure he’s ever heard from her, want and need laced through with an unguarded desperation. He stops fucking around and reaches for the calm he uses when he needs his hands rock-steady and gets the map up and running.

“We’re coming up on the interstate.” He’s kinda proud that his voice is steady, because under the layer of professional calm, the rest of him is so keyed up he’s not sure how he’s not shaking apart. “Five miles.”

“Good.” Natasha’s found her own calm, too, but Clint knows what’s under it. He makes himself keep still, not reach for her hair or where the low lights from the dashboard silhouette the perfect arch of her cheekbone. He starts a list, though: everywhere he wants to touch, everything he wants to do. 

The first place they come to is a ten-room, independently-owned motor court. Clint is all for supporting the little guy, but right now, since he’s not really planning on them getting out of bed for at least a couple of days, he’d like a shot at someplace that’s gotten new mattresses and sheets sometime in the last decad,e and this place isn’t looking like it’s up to the challenge. Nat doesn’t even slow down; clearly, the hive mind Sitwell is always whining about hasn’t been affected by the prospect of sex.

The next place is nothing but a mid-level chain, but the rooms open to the interior hallway, which means there’s a tiny bit more of a chance he and Nat might sleep at the same time. Also of the good, there’s a coffee shop attached; even if there isn’t room service, they can call in an order and flip for who has to get dressed to go pick it up. It’s how they always operate, except this time Clint’s brain is doing metaphorical cartwheels over the whole having-to-get-dressed part. He gets the door open and himself headed to check in almost before Natasha has the car stopped. He doesn’t actually think she’ll change her mind, but he doesn’t see any need to take his time either. 

Natasha doesn’t bother waiting for him, just shows up carrying their duffels before the clerk even gets his card swiped. She doesn’t say anything, and she doesn’t even stand close to him, but Clint is so hyper-aware of her presence that he can barely remember the license plate number on the GTO. She notices him fumbling it, of course, and she gives him an arch of an eyebrow that’s trying hard for amusement, but not quite making it, not when he factors in the way her eyes are following every move he makes. 

He nods absently at the girl behind the front desk as she gives him the standard welcoming spiel and just barely manages not to snatch the key card from her hand. Natasha _is_ smirking at him now, but all that’s doing is making him want her more. He’s sick to death of seeing her with her eyes tight with worry--if all it takes to make her happy is him being an idiot at the thought of having her all to himself, then he’s good with being the clown. 

“Nice,” he mutters as they walk away from the front desk, because he’s not actually going to admit that he’s okay with it. She knows it, of course, but she’d probably start looking for Loki if Clint didn’t give her some kind of grief. 

“I _was_ planning on making it up to you,” Natasha says. 

“Promises, promises,” Clint sighs--or tries to. He ends up more choking than breathing when she takes his hand and runs her thumb nail across his palm and down to the inside of his wrist. “Nat,” he grits out, and she smiles and takes the key card out of his hand. 

“Clint,” she answers, and then they’re there, the lock going green and letting Clint slam the door open and into the wall behind it. Natasha laughs for real, wild and free, like Clint’s only heard once or twice and has never forgotten. She drags Clint’s head down to her own, and Clint can kiss her, _finally_ , her mouth hot and lush against his, her hands somehow already under his shirt. “ _Clint_ ,” she murmurs again. Clint holds it together long enough that he can cup her face in both hands and lick into her mouth, long and slow and wanting, but then she’s biting at his lower lip, and there’s no real way he can keep it like that.

“Last night--” Clint breaks off as she drags her nails the length of his spine, a fast, sharp trail that makes him hiss and push into it at the same time. She pulls his shirt off and claws at him again, and then one more time so his whole back is lit up and his dick is aching for some of its own. 

“Last night,” Natasha prompts, backing them into the room and shedding clothes at the same time, as though more skin and proximity to the king-sized bed is going to get Clint’s brain back on-line. Clint bites his way down her neck and over her collarbone, stopping there long enough for her to deal with her bra because he doesn’t want anything in the way when he gets to the good part. 

And it _is_ the good part--as soon as he gets his mouth on her nipple, she arches up into him with a noise that would be a whine from anyone else. From her, though, it’s more like a growl, desperate and ragged and better than almost anything Clint’s heard, ever. He sucks at her and bites down, and she snarls at him in Russian, warnings and curses and threats. He does it again and her voice breaks like he’s never heard it before. He could make her come from this, Clint thinks, and fuck if that doesn’t punch buttons he never knew he had, but it’ll have to be later, not now, because, now, _now_ , he wants her hard and fast and crazy. 

They’re at the bed, finally--they might have actually been there for a while, Clint isn’t sure, and he doesn’t think anyone could blame him for not paying attention to anything but the woman in his arms--and he makes himself pull back, just enough to lay Natasha down on the mattress--he’s not thinking about how she’s just letting him put her where he wants her, he’s _not_ , he’ll save that for later, probably for forever. She blinks up at him, her eyes almost all dark pupil and her mouth swollen, her hair wild around her. Clint made himself stop having dreams like this years ago, but even at his most self-indulgent, he never got anything this good. Natasha smiles up at him--slow and _happy_ , and Clint might lose a couple brain cells at that, but who’s counting-- and lets go of him to start working on getting rid of the rest of her clothes.

“Last night--” Clint says again, as he follows her lead and yanks at his belt.

“You said that already,” Natasha says, kicking one boot halfway across the room and reaching for the zipper on the other. She’s still smiling at him, and he’s still loving it, so he doesn’t do anything stupid like going for the sensitive spot under her ribs--the Black Widow is not, of course, ticklish, but Clint knows how to make her squirm if he needs to--instead getting his jeans undone and then doing the same for her.

“Yeah,” he says, leaning down to bite along the curve of her waist. She hums something wordless but approving that goes straight to his dick. “That was--last night was me, figuring I was probably only gonna have one shot at it, this--” _you_ , he means-- “so I better make it last.” 

Natasha shifts under him; when he finds the nerve to look up at her, she’s leaning up on both elbows, eying him thoughtfully. 

“Not that I’m complaining about last night,” Natasha says, reaching out to touch him, his mouth, the corner of his eyes, his cheekbone. Clint holds himself very, very still. “You’re over that, though?”

“Maybe,” he says honestly, because there’s a lot of years behind everything in his head and it isn’t just going to disappear. He adds,. “Probably not, but… Don’t think slow is gonna do it tonight in any case.”

“I can work with that.” Natasha’s smile is knowing and wicked this time, inviting him and daring him and telling him she’s right there with him. So, basically, their partnership, and Clint can do that. He grins back at her and shoves his hand into her jeans to finger her fast and hard and rough. In the split-second before she reacts, his brain red-lines with the _slickhotwet_ he’s finding, but then she’s yanking him closer and reaching for his dick and it is _on_ , Clint clawing and dragging at her jeans at the same time he’s fighting to get out of his own. 

“Come on, come _on_ ,” Natasha hisses at him, her nails doing another number on his back, but it’s worth it, it’s all worth it the second he finally, _finally_ drives into her and she sinks her teeth into his shoulder and comes. 

“‘S good,” Clint grits out. “Fuck, Nat, so good, so good.” He’s not going to last long, not with how she’s gasping and shaking against him, so fucking tight around his dick, but he wants it to, wants to keep going like this, deep and fast and hard enough that he can barely drag enough air into his lungs. He hangs on the edge for longer than he thought possible, everything coiled low in his belly and thighs and balls, desperate to let go of it all, desperate not to, but then Natasha is saying his name again and again in a low keening sob, arching up into him and coming again, her legs tightening around him, drawing him down into her, and he can’t not follow and let his world go white with pleasure.

* * *

Sex, Natasha decides as she watches Clint navigate the crowded floor of the small bar they’re in, both does and doesn’t change things. There’s very little different in this scenario; they have spent more than a few nights together in places just like this. Clint runs the same game with the dartboards, where he throws with his right hand and still wins every time. Natasha rolls her eyes at his taste in music; Clint smirks and calls her a snob. They fall asleep in the same bed and wake each other when the dreams are bad. None of this is different from how it has always been with them, until, of course, it’s all different. 

They touch each other frequently now, small and often-times absentminded touches that by rights should also be meaningless but are nothing of the sort. It surprises them both that Natasha is often the instigator, but it pleases her to see Clint lean into her touch, especially when, like now, as he hands her a bottle of water, he doesn’t seem conscious of doing it. If Natasha’s smile is slightly more self-satisfied than a simple thank you might warrant, she is not going to concern herself about it. 

“So, we’ve got maybe another day before we run out of road,” Clint says, turning the chair around to straddle it. Natasha allows herself to be distracted by the sight; when she does finally make herself answer with a wordless murmur, there’s the slightest of flushes high across his cheekbones. Her smile is definitely self-satisfied now, and she is not at all concerned about it. Getting that much of a reaction out of someone so closely guarded is gratifying on so very many levels. Natasha knows she should examine it more closely, but not in the middle of what Clint has assured her is a genuine honky-tonk. “Last time I mentioned that you said we could turn around and do it in reverse, but --”

“Or we can pick another road,” Natasha says. 

“Okay,” Clint says slowly, looking at her as though she’s grown an extra head. “I figured you were just babying me along the whole recovery process--”

“I wasn’t.” Natasha sips at the water he brought her and then offers it to him. “Fury knows how to get in touch with us--do you actually think he’d hesitate if he needed either one of us?”

“No, but--” Clint puts the bottle down and chews thoughtfully on his bottom lip.

“But?” Natasha would very much like to be distracted again--a part of her brain, after all, knows how that lip tastes and feels and how easily he will give it to her--but the cold, rational thought that _Clint_ might be the one with objections to continuing has presented itself, and she needs to pay proper attention to the conversation. 

“But this--” Clint waves vaguely around the room, the cramped bar and the tiny stage surrounded by uneven tables and a few neon signs gone foggy from age, “--really isn’t your thing.”

“It’s not,” Natasha agrees, watching him carefully because what he says is often less important than what he’s not saying. “But I’m fine.” Clint is clearly expecting her to say more. Natasha finally offers, “If you don’t want me--”

“Nat,” Clint says in that patient tone that he uses on baby agents after their first close call, when they don’t exactly know how they’ve survived and he’s walking them through all the things they did right. “I’m just saying that it’s your turn to pick.”

“I--” Natasha looks at him through narrowed eyes. “Are you playing _mother hen_ with me, Barton?”

“Yes,” he answers in that same patient tone. “I mean, I know I’m not in the best shape, but yeah, that’s what I’m doing.” The undercurrents in his voice are dark, but not hopeless, and his smile is real when he adds, “You gonna let me?”

Natasha thinks about the first weeks and months after she’d come in with him, when even the good days were shot through with doubt and mistrust and uncertainty and how he never missed one. He was sharper then, all rough edges and a screaming need to prove himself, but still centered enough to sit with her while she found her way through everything she’d feared from the second she understood what the Red Room had done. He’s watching her now like he had then, like he’ll take whatever she decides to give him. Then, she hadn’t known the depths of that promise, but now she does.

“Yes,” she answers simply, and lets him take her hand.

* * *

Clint always forgets how many stars you can see when you’re out in the middle of nowhere with no lights from the city to wash out the night sky. He leans against the windshield of the car and loses himself in the thousands and thousands of lights scattered above him. Even after Natasha comes out to see if he’s been eaten by coyotes he doesn’t really look away, just tugs her up on the hood with him and tucks her up against his side. 

“Are we staying here all night?” Natasha doesn’t sound annoyed, only vaguely curious. It’s 60 miles to the nearest town and the dry Arizona air makes it clear enough that they can watch the Milky Way rise. She’s watching just as closely as he is; he feels her breath catch every time there’s a shooting star.

“Nah,” Clint answers. “I was just thinking, though--”

“I’ll alert the media,” Natasha says dryly, and he’s just quick enough that he can dig his fingers into the sensitive spot at her waist. She lets him get away with it, by which Clint deduces that she’s feeling sentimental. She’ll never admit that, of course, but he knows what he knows. “Yes?” Natasha prompts. “You were thinking?”

“We kinda saved the world,” Clint says, his eyes still on the millions of stars. 

“We did,” Natasha agrees, and he can feel her smiling against his shoulder.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from _Come Near_ by Lykke Li, due entirely to the lyric "We are two, we are one inside, livin’ life, and we’re good." 
> 
> I have a tag on tumblr that I used to round up some of the many pictures, .gifsets and fanworks that reminded me of the Clint and Natasha I was trying to write, [here](http://topaz119.tumblr.com/tagged/mbb).
> 
> Huge thanks to [](http://withdiamonds.livejournal.com/profile)[**withdiamonds**](http://withdiamonds.livejournal.com/) , who was on comma wrangling duty for yet another fandom she doesn't read--any remaining grammar oddities are all my fault for changing things after she finished. Much love to [](http://eretria.livejournal.com/profile)[**eretria**](http://eretria.livejournal.com/) , [](http://alphaflyer.livejournal.com/profile)[**alphaflyer**](http://alphaflyer.livejournal.com/) and [](http://astridv.dreamwidth.org/profile)[](http://astridv.dreamwidth.org/)**astridv** for reading and cheerleading along the way. They got me through that first gut-check, before I was really sure I even had a story. And many thanks to the [](http://shinysilver.livejournal.com/profile)[**shinysilver**](http://shinysilver.livejournal.com/) and [](http://somehowunbroken.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://somehowunbroken.livejournal.com/)**somehowunbroken** for running a clean and easy challenge, which I know takes lots more effort than it appears.


End file.
